Thoughts of others
by AristideCauquemaire
Summary: The influence of three things no one can escape: The past, the innermost desires, and the thoughts of others. HP/DM, complete.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

_Hello there! This is the second piece of fanfiction I send out into the world. This time, I had help with the rearing – Nia, your comments and advice truly made me all giddy and happy, and made the story better. Thank you very much for your help._

_This story doesn't need much of an introduction at all. Enjoy! (and leave a comment, that'd be grand and give me warm and fuzzy feelings.)_

/

**-/Chapter 1/-**

/

"I'm going to say this... only this one time. One time, Malfoy. Better listen up."

The whites in Potter's eyes were criss-crossed with red. Coffee was strong on his breath, among other things.

Draco set his jaw until his molars hurt and fought against the panic that usually came with being violently shoved up against a wall by one's throat and strangled with one's own shirt collar. By someone who wasn't exactly stronger or taller but still came out on top due to sheer anger.

He would have told Potter that he appreciated the hands-on approach. He would have told him how he had come to admire wizards who put aside their wands, rolled their sleeves up and got things done by more conventional, straightforward means. He would have, but he couldn't breathe.

Potter's conventional, straightforward means were clamped so tightly and powerfully around his neck that he was starting to see black spots with bright coronas flitting about between those red veins in the whites of Potter's eyes. Against this dimming backdrop, his green irises seemed to glow from within, like pieces of green ember or pieces of stained glass in the sun.

"You will never speak of her in this manner again. Never. Is that clear?"

Good thing he wasn't really waiting for an answer. Giving one required oxygen and he was all out of that.

"And while you're at it, I suggest you never speak of _any_ member of the Weasley family again."

Just before he kicked out in an ill-advised attempt to make Potter let go, Potter hissed another "Is that clear?" at his face and finally unhanded him.

Funny how he had always thought the character in the films to be a total wuss for not fighting back right away when the big baddie was distracted for a moment and had lost his hold. The truth was that the first breath he had greedily sucked into his painfully empty lungs had taken an entirely wrong turn somewhere. He was on all fours, coughing and retching at the linoleum floor, feeling like he was disgorging his windpipe until tears were streaming down his face and out through his nose. He was shaking and completely useless.

Before he had succeeded in properly composing himself again – even before he had got back up on his two feet again – he croaked out "crystal clear", tiny and just barely loud enough for Potter to hear.

The Auror hastily gathered the papers he had previously scattered about the table, flung the case file he had brought with him shut and left the room at the smart pace of someone who doesn't want to stay where he is and has somewhere else to be anyway.

Harry Potter, Auror 1st class. Always busy and sought after. Probably had someone else to choke into submission.

Rubbing his sore throat that still felt like it was being strangled, Draco figured that this experience was something of a privilege. Potter certainly didn't lay hands on ever run-of-the-mill criminal like this – no, that was something his ginger sidekick with the stupid complexion whose name Draco wasn't allowed to utter any more was for, he'd wager.

Draco coughed again, fought himself onto two very unsteady feet and further figured that he had got himself into this mess with his big mouth and that it'd get much worse very soon before it could possibly get... well, slightly less worse. Especially if the recording Potter was so very pissed about was a full memory of that night. The things he had said that night- he whispered a pointed "shit!" under his breath. His heart clenched in his chest at the thought. It made him nervous. Afraid.

Draco didn't have much hope that the gods would be on his side and keep Potter from watching it until the end eventually. Or that Boot had been too smashed to remember.

He rubbed his sore throat. The place where Potter's fingers had almost touched him. His pulse was still racing, he could feel it drumming in the carotid just below the skin.

Oh no, things would get worse. They rarely ever got "better" in his life these days.

/

/

He had made a habit of biting the tip of his thumb. One of these days he might just bite it clean off.

He should never have let himself be talked into that smoke abstinence spell by Hermione. After months of resistance he had finally given in to her, and only two weeks in it felt like the withdrawal was slowly killing him. Coffee wasn't helping, not even in abundance, not even when it was strong enough to bend the spoon with which he stirred. Work wasn't helping. Not when the reason for his yearning for cigarettes was omnipresent here as well.

And she was. Her name was like a smell that permeated the air wherever he went. Like the cloud of stale cigarette odour he was carrying around with him now that Hermione's ghastly spell was expelling the residues of eight months of chain smoking from his body. Ever since last Wednesday, she was everywhere. Everyone was talking, whispering about her, and about him, and their – well, marriage.

Their carcass of a marriage.

"Here's to- to us! And to my good friend Gregory who I thought would be too strong to succumb to the wiles of the woman, but alas-"

Zabini made a show of slapping Goyle's big shoulders while the rest of the table roared with boozy laughter about the word 'strong' and what Zabini had actually meant.

"To us!" the Italian repeated and the entirety of the group echoed, raising glasses to already slightly slurring lips. Silence fell for a moment as alcohol was gulped down.

A Glenn Miller song was playing at low volume. Glasses were clinking and thunking down on wooden tables. Somewhere a door fell shut with a squeak, cutting off a hissing sound from an unseen kitchen. The buzz of general conversation lay underneath it all. The epitome of a pleasant night.

Harry turned away from the oval plate of silvery glass the thoughts were magically projected on. The picture wasn't as clear as it would have been had he visited the thoughts in a Pensieve. The view was limited, it was much like he were sitting in Terry Boot's head and looking out through his eyes. The sound rattled rather badly and spurred his headache. Still, he wouldn't dive into the memory, not unless he could help it.

He hated doing that. His history with Pensieves was an unhappy one.

He tried to get some paperwork done – his report over the citation and interrogation of Draco Lucius Malfoy this afternoon, in particular – while in the background the happy bachelor's party went on, its volume increasing with every pint as the bar was lowered further and further still.

In the background of the cheery inebriation, at the left edge of Terry Boot's vision and slightly lost in the fuzz of intoxication, a meeting of two men took place. One was tall and wore a very fashionable robe, the other was smaller, hunched and concealed by a tattered cloak. They had a table for six in a separate booth to themselves and appeared to be talking amicably over a pint of beer and a steaming mug of tea.

This meeting was the reason why Terry Boot's memory of that night had been confiscated by the Ministry, and why every Auror in the Ministry had seen it, sometimes repeatedly.

One of the two men – a youthful gentleman with the short, brown hair on the left, known to the Ministry under the empty name of Mr Notherday – was under strong suspicion of being responsible for a series of potion poisoning that had St Mungo's buzzing. Two people had died already. Pharmacies and potion shops were being raided and closed. Shacklebolt was currently giving it 48 hours until details of the story would come to public attention and cause mass panic.

The man across from him, stooped, thin-haired, dirty and ragged, was what was left of Fenrir Greyback. No one could be sure what the Americans had done to him in their laboratories – just like no one could say how they had captured him in the first place, or how he had escaped from them afterwards, or how he had made his way back to England – but it surely hadn't been pleasant.

"... ridiculous is that? Eh?"

Harry sighed and peeled the little attention he had given his papers off of them and redirected it to the screen. He knew that the crucial scene would start soon hereafter.

"No cheating, Malfoy. Hands where I can see 'em!"

Truth or dare. Such harmless fun until you mixed it with magic. Spells were said to bind the players to their oath. Hands were shaken to fix it into place. And the game began.

Pansy Parkinson shriekingly admitted to having had fantasies about a Hogwarts teacher when she was young but was saved from disclosing names. At least until next round.

Blaise Zabini shrugged and admitted to a foot fetish. Parkinson seemed very intrigued by this. Malfoy asked him if it wasn't more of a shoe fetish, and people cackled.

Millicent Bulstrode chose dare and snogged Zacharias Smith. Both of them pulled faces and theatrically wiped their mouths in the end but even the drunk crowd wasn't fooled.

The bachelor himself, Goyle, blushed to an unpleasant shade of blotchy beet red as he vainly tried to wriggle his way around a confession of virginity.

"He's _saving_ himself, people. Have some respect for this man, eh?! It's admirable and romantic and everything!" Parkinson admonished the audience over its roaring laugh although she was clearly as amused as everyone else was. Goyle's shoulders were slapped again with vigour while he drowned his humiliation with long gulps of butterbeer.

In the background, Fenrir Greyback's hand shot out to grasp the wrist of his opposite. Both men were taut as bowstrings now. Aggression lay in the set of their shoulders.

Marcus Flint admitted that he preferred bums over boobs which got him appreciation from an obviously like-minded Zabini and raspberry noises from Smith who promptly attempted to convert him, citing the names of various Muggle underwear models and actresses to plead his case. The name Christina Hendricks was repeated several times.

Another pitcher of Firewhiskey was brought into their midst. Boot's attention latched onto it so intensely that Greyback and his partner vanished in a grey haze of non-awareness, as did the answer of Blaise Zabini to a question concerning a favourite sex position.

When Boot tuned back in to the conversation, it was Draco Malfoy's turn.

"Truth, naturally," Malfoy sneered at Zabini as if he were stupid to even have proposed a 'dare' and implied activity of any kind.

"Ha! Get this. Clearwater. Patil. Granger. Weasley." Zabini listed them slowly, with an emphasis on every name. Especially the last one. People hooted as he said it.

Blonde, black, brunette or ginger. Funny and witty in drunken people's brains.

"Is that supposed to be a question?" Malfoy asked with an exaggerated rolling of the eyes. "You know, questions usually require interrogative pronouns, Blaise. Try to form a complete sentence, will you, you ineloquent peasant?"

"Kill, date, marry and fuck, Malfoy," Zabini answered his taunts with a nod of his head. "Which one of them?"

People oooh'ed. Goyle congratulated Zabini on a good question.

Mr Notherday yanked his hand out of Greyback's grip while his jaw and his lips were moving very fast as he talked insistently to his opposite. In reaction, Greyback hunched over a little further, speaking a deeply feral body language, like a dog about to pounce.

"Kill Granger, of course," Malfoy began his answer without much hesitation. His audience half groaned, half tittered. Boot himself mumbled a 'that was to be expected' while Smith sneered 'surprise, surprise' into his beer.

The decade between their collective past at school and that evening and the fact that, technically, none of them had been Slytherin or Gryffindor for quite some time had changed nothing about Slytherin-Gryffindor animosity. Their irritation with Hermione Granger in particular was as strong as it had been before they graduated. Maybe because she had been or still was responsible for some of their or their parents' cases.

Hermione, true to her potential and her nature, had quickly risen to the post of Undersecretary of the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt. Harry had to admit that she cut quite a figure as she hurried around the Ministry in her functional two-piece suit, looking all bossy and official. Had she not been the wife of his best friend and essentially like a sister to him, he would've also remarked that she had grown up to be an immensely attractive woman. Something the Slytherins obviously didn't much care about and which did nothing to take the edge of their loathing for her.

"Date Patil," the blond continued with a theatrical flip of his hair that imitated the one Parvati always sported in her advertisements. The crowd guffawed.

In the course of last year, Parvati Patil had become Wizarding England's first shampoo model, advertising a line of 'All-magical! All-natural! So wonderful!' products. The long, supernaturally glossy mane flowing down her shoulders like a stream of black ink was the new standard for hair beauty ever since.

In the background, the brown-haired man suddenly had Greyback at wandpoint. Very surreptitiously so that the wand itself was hardly visible to any spectator except those who were specifically looking for it and following the exchange. The werewolf backed off in his seat very slowly.

"Marry Clearwater. If I have to."

Since she graduated from Hogwarts, Percy Weasley's ex-girlfriend Penelope Clearwater had become the youngest witch to ever be a chosen member of the Wizengamot. Pictures of the beautiful young woman beaming at the camera in her judge's gown which, although it was essentially a bag with wide holes and sleeves, didn't manage to hide her curvy figure, had been in every newspaper.

The moment he said it had been the moment that Harry's stomach had flipped over as realization of what was about to happen dawned. Other people had been present that time, just like him, confronted with the material for the first time. Even in the solitude of his office right now he could feel the looks they had given him, the looks they had shot at him like poison darts. His neck prickled.

"So boring, isn't she?" Zabini fingered his glass and grimaced. "Pretty enough, but SO yawn. No wonder I don't even remember her from school."

"But they'd make perfect little blond babies," Parkinson remarked.

"As long as I have a say in the matter, no, we most certainly would not," Malfoy retorted and Parkinson shot back, "Good! Actually, for the sake of mankind, Malfoys shouldn't reproduce anyway. The fewer insufferable, entitled brats with ridiculous names, the better."

The banter carried on for another minute, until the topic was worn and Malfoy finished his oath-bound answer. As Harry had dreaded he would.

"And fuck Potter-Weasley, I suppose."

The audience of the memory hooted and whistled. When Boot looked at him again, Malfoy was leaning back in his chair, obviously complacent.

Ginny Weasley. She had become star chaser of the Holyhead Harpies and looked stunning in her emerald garb, with the bronze cape flapping wildly in the wind and her bright red hair trailing after her when she shot around the field evading bludgers, passing around quaffles and scoring wonderful shots.

Ginny had refused to take on the name of Potter or even make a double name when they got married four years ago. Still, the newspapers – and Malfoy, apparently – liked to refer to her by double name as if people needed to be reminded who she was married to from time to time.

Harry had thought nothing much of her insistence to stay a full 'Weasley', and her shrugging off his offer to take her name instead.

"Names are not important to me, Harry," she had said and added with a mild smile that "Harry Weasley sounds atrocious anyway. Also, 'Harry Potter' is a _brand_. It needs to stay."

In retrospect, he could wildly interpret things into it. Predict, without any help from Sibyl Trelawny, how it would soon all go rotten.

How she would become the joke of the party – and he with her by association.

"Since everybody does, these days, why not give it a go." Malfoy shrugged haughtily and took a long drink from his tankard. Harry wanted to dive into the memory and wring his neck and yell at him, _why can't you let it rest?_ all over again.

_Why won't they all just shut up?_

"Gotta get in line when it's obviously worth it, eh?" Smith brayed.

"I wouldn't even know behind whom to get in line right now," Flint responded and turned to Parkinson for advice, "Do you?"

"Finnigan? Thompson? Grant? McLaggen? That underwear model with the piercings, whatshisname...? Hell if I know."

"Gee, you're about as helpful as Potter, Pans." Zabini received a stuck-out tongue for that. Harry received a bucket of ice to the stomach, again.

Ginny had been with all of these men, he knew now. It was true and so, so ugly. It was awful because in his head as well as on paper, she was still his wife.

He was still her husband. And yes, he was about as helpful as Pansy Parkinson. He had no idea who Ginny was with right now, or had been with two weeks ago.

"Wouldn't be surprised if that Lovegood woman were queueing there as well." Pansy's voice changed pitch to imitate Luna's strange, dreamy articulation. "How about it, Weasley? Just you and me and the nargles."

Harry remembered how embarrassingly hard it had been not to glance at his colleague at that moment. She had been standing right next to him.

He knew that all the others had stared at her then, shifting their glances from him to her. He knew that, if he had lifted his eyes from the looking glass and looked at his colleague, he might have lifted some of the awful pressure pressing down on him as well. Getting rid of the unwanted attention and heaping it onto her. Knowing that she could take it without even complaining, because she truly didn't care.

But he hadn't. He had stared at the damn screen with hate squeezing his windpipe, hate for himself, for being such a fucking loser and not being able to hold on to his wife, hate for Ginny, for cheating on him in so many ways and letting everyone know, and hate for Malfoy and his mouth and the foul truths that spilled out of it with cutting edges.

"Never took you for someone to enjoy second-hand stuff, though, Drakey," Parkinson piped up yet again and earned herself a disdainful look from Malfoy that only served to make her happy. "And by second hand, I mean something more like twenty second hand, I think."

"And yet I enjoyed you, Pansy." Malfoy toasted her with a curling of the lip. The crowd oooh'ed yet again – Flint blurted 'Oh snap!' – and laughed while Parkinson pulled an affronted face.

"I just had a little experience with Finch-Fletchley, that's all." She illustrated the _little_ by holding up her thumb and her index finger which made Bulstrode snort beer out of her nose.

"Well, so had Weasley a month ago, or so I've heard." Malfoy gestured with his hand as if swatting a fly. "Anyway, there's something about the weaslette that pulls more customers than her brother's shop. So besides the fact that she's not entirely fugly, there must be something wondrous to her... magic cave."

That had the entire group laughing and thumping their glasses on the table.

The two men in the background were lost from sight for another moment, then appeared again as Greyback – his body back to a more normal and human stance – stood up and brought his face very close to his opposite's. One could imagine threatening words being hissed through broken teeth and animalistic growls rattling in the back of a throat. And suddenly, with a superhuman speed, the cloaked figure was out of the door and disappeared into the London night. Mr Notherday slumped visibly in relief but soon put his face in his hands in a gesture of despair. He stayed like that for a moment, pulled some coins out of his pocket to pay for the drink and finally left just as Malfoy tried to reign in the crowd.

"Alright, enough of that." Malfoy talked loudly over the laughter that still went on over his cave remark and now involved the practical effects that racing brooms could have on women, anatomically. "Where were we? Ah, Millicent, your turn again-"

This was the moment that Jones had switched the record off. The silence had been so damning and atrocious that Harry had caught himself talking – to himself and out loud – about the exchange in the background, summarizing everything that had been observed, using and repeating the two men's names over and over again, just to fill the quiet. And to keep everyone else from speaking about the fire-breathing dragon in the room.

When they had safely latched on to that pretend professionalism, he had excused himself to use the rest room.

He had locked the door behind himself.

After shattering every mirror on the wall and cracking one of the sinks, he had locked himself into one of the stalls for over an hour. Maybe he had cried, he didn't even know. If he had, he couldn't even say why he would've done that, either. It shouldn't matter what a bunch of pissed Slytherins, lousy Hufflepuffs and scummy Ravenclaws were talking about when they came together for a binge. On top of that, everything that they had said, everybody knew. _He_ had already known.

He had known for years and years.

/

/**TBC**

_Leave a comment, make my day._


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: Exposition. Fans of Ginny Weasley might find this one particularly aggravating.

_Thanks to Crystal Bruner and SeminoleSweety for their comments!  
Also thanks to the unknown person who found his/her way to my other story – you made my stats go all After All This Time?! and it warms the cockles of my heart._

/

**-/Chapter 2/-**

/

When he had first found out about Ginny's indiscretions their wedding hadn't even been six months past.

He had chosen not to confront her because he hadn't known how. In theory, he knew the words he should use. But he didn't know how to string them together to sentences that were fit to be uttered in her presence. Every time he tried, despite his own reluctance, he needed so much time just to gather his breath that Ginny got impatient, crossed her arms and would eventually leave the room. So everything remained unspoken.

Also, he felt he had no real right to claim fidelity. As a man, he couldn't give her what she wanted and deserved. They had tried, several times. He just... didn't manage it. He couldn't- couldn't.

As a husband, he was hardly ever there. His job kept him out of the house – thirteen, fourteen hours a day. It brought good money, but that had never redeemed a husband, had it?

After he had noticed her... activities, he started working overtime more regularly. Occasionally, he spent the night at the office, too.

Bit by bit, occasionally became usually.

They were not even married for a year but their marriage had perished already. They both knew. The space he had given her, hoping against all common sense that that was the panacea to what ailed their relationship, had grown into a bottomless pit between them. Unmanagably wide.

He still didn't know how to talk to her about it all, about their life – their _lives_, then, plural – and their marriage and_ what on earth_ she was doing anyway. It was like that one glass of edibles – mayonnaise maybe, or antipasti – that had been opened and tasted, then put into the very back of the upper shelf in the refrigerator and now was just standing there, growing mouldy and gross. It was too awful to take out and throw away, too nasty to even touch. You wouldn't know how to handle the mess if you brought it out, either. On the other hand, if you just left it standing there, nothing much would happen to it. One could get used to the faintly rancid smell that wafted through the fridge. Blame it on the onions and cover it with the sharp curry from Indian takeaway leftovers.

Ginny kick-started her career as the Harpies' chaser at the beginning of that season. In the pictures that were required by the newspapers of her and her Also Very Famous Husband only he was wearing a wedding band. Her ring finger didn't even have a lighter trace on the skin any more. Only one reporter ever asked about it. Ginny answered that it would be too dangerous to wear it during games or practice. Next question.

Years came and passed and only occasional birthdays, Christmas dinners and the turning of the seasons made him aware of it at all. They hardly ever saw each other as he worked his arse off for the Ministry, chasing after sinister individuals, left-over Death Eaters and wannabe Voldemorts, immersed himself with work, and she travelled from match to match and lived her life. In interviews she always commended his full support for her career and told the press that, while the long-distance relationship was hard to maintain, they managed somehow and would pull through. In every interview she remarked that she was looking forward to winter break or summer break or holidays when they would have more time for one another again.

He had long lost track of her by then. He couldn't even bring himself to care for her matches any more. He heard about an injury that had sidelined her for two weeks from the newspapers. Winter and summer breaks and holidays came and went without him seeing her face at all.

Then, eight months ago, Ginny had disclosed to him that she was pregnant.

/

/

He had been numb. He might or might not have mumbled 'Congratulations. Who's the father?' in response.

Mainly, he had just stared at her.

She had cut her hair and he thought that it suited her really well. It made the earrings stand out more. They looked expensive. He wondered who had bought them for her because they didn't look like the kind of earrings Ginny would ever have bought for herself. Too flashy.

He wondered if that same guy was the father, and if not, if the two guys knew of one another. They both definitely knew of him. They knew that he was her husband and had slept with her anyway.

Just before leaving, as if in an afterthought, she had added that she would file for divorce now. "So there won't be a problem with the custody and all that."

He had started smoking that day, from zero to ten in 24 hours. Benson & Hedges Silver. They had made him cough and puke up his lunch, then his dinner, and substituted his breakfast. He hated the things with a vengeance and he couldn't stop. Also, he didn't want to stop because he didn't want to miss hating them.

The next time he saw his wife, nine or ten weeks later, she was lying in a hospital bed in Belfast. She was pale and looked awfully frail and cried soundlessly the entire time of his visit. Her mother was holding her one hand, her father the other.

He wasn't without sympathy for her plight, not at all. But the motherly accusing looks of Molly Weasley made him itch to ask her how the divorce papers were coming along.

The Weasley elders thought it best to hand their youngest child over to some specialists, for therapy and rehabilitation. Not just to deal with the trauma, Arthur Weasley implied in one of the few talks they had nowadays, but also to do something about her proclivities. Her unhealthy, excessive lifestyle. To help her "sort things out".

With "things" he meant that forgotten glass in the fridge. Their continued existence as bonded people which, against all odds and despite those positive perspectives that had been there when they were young, even despite the love he had once felt for her and she for him, carried no meaning. No meaning at all. Everything had looked so fine there at the beginning, but no one knew exactly what had happened and ultimately their marriage had ended up stillborn, too.

/

/

One of the therapists was thought to be the first leak in the dam wall, although no one would ever know for sure and the guy naturally denied it with all his might. Information about Ginny Weasley's psychological problems – her nymphomania – her _affairs_ trickled, then quickly flooded into the media.

They were hungry for every little bit of the story, hungry for every morsel about VIP Weasley, sister of the owner of the mighty profitable Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes as well as a decorated Auror, sister in law of the Minister of Magic's fierce Undersecretary, wife of the Saviour of Wizardkind. For years she had been so perfect, so pretty, athletic, talented and yet down to earth. Hers was the story of a girl that grew up in a very poor if loving household, surrounded by strong male figures as the youngest and smallest who eventually came out on top, married the guy of every girl's dreams, and then went and earned her own money. Lots of money. With something she was indeed very good at. She was a heroine but approachable, too. Forever the pretty girl next door.

The backlash was long overdue and people couldn't wait to see her fall.

Lovers and former lovers – a few of them fake – came forward in droves to spill the beans. Team members and coaches, former team members and former coaches, opponents and former opponents, former classmates or friends, fans and groupies, even hotel personnel came to add their tales to the ongoing series The Tumultuous Life of Ginevra Weasley. Ginevra _Potter_-Weasley.

When a certain level of ruination is reached, one tends to take the sledgehammer into one's own hands to smash all the rest to bits as well, for closure. Ginny made several appointments with Rita Skeeter herself and handed her the true story, with all the sordid details.

Harry assumed that he should be giving her credit for at least not telling the world about his problems in the conjugal bed. Not telling them, however, didn't keep them from deducing the truth from the implications.

He was a lousy and neglectful husband in every respect, apathetic, devoid of passion and manliness, a heartless, soulless excuse for a husband. He really didn't know what his wife was doing, or with whom, and he hadn't known or hadn't wanted to know for years. Drunk Slytherins knew that. Everyone knew that. He didn't know who she was dating right now. Not a clue.

The worst thing was that he couldn't bring himself to_ care_ about the fact that he was so indifferent towards his wife. Maybe that was the reason for the mirror-shattering anger and the tears that may or may not have fallen.

Or maybe it was just the nicotine withdrawal. It truly made him feel – and smell – like shit.

/

/

A glance at the clock, ticking along with its hollow plastic sound, told Harry that it was quarter to three in the morning again already. He laid down his glasses and rubbed his stinging eyes.

In front of him, the words of the report were starting to blur. The saddest thing was that he might as well be writing a lorem ipsum into it. No one would question his reasons for bringing in Draco Malfoy – Draco _Malfoy_, son of Lucius, prisoner YX391 – for an interrogation that had barely lasted ten minutes. The audiovisual spell file he had added was entirely blank – something easily explicable by instability of the monitoring spells in the interrogation room which happened once every month at least. There was no back-up report from any other staff member due to chronic shortage of said staff members. Everyone would understand, no one would second-guess.

It was such a beautifully airtight story, it was all but tragic that literally no one would care.

Moreover, it was almost a shame that Malfoy was too scared to press charges. When he had him shoved up against the wall he had seen the fear in his eyes. The former Slytherin knew very well that, should he file a complaint for assault – with zero evidence at hand – Harry would make an accusation of slander on behalf of both himself and his wife.

The name of Malfoy didn't carry the clout it once had. Those days were long gone. Draco couldn't afford a top-class lawyer, not any more. He wouldn't stand a chance and he knew it, so he would keep his mouth shut.

Therefore, this incident was a closed case.

"Under-appreciated work of art," Harry mumbled to himself and finally closed the file case, tapping it with his wand so that it snapped shut. He stood and made to walk it to the archives when the mention of his name snagged his attention.

"Why, Harry Potter, of course." Drunk people roared and clapped.

/

/

The memory of the bachelor's party had been playing in the background the entire time. He hadn't listened for the most part, although he remembered picking up on the events of Goyle throwing up spectacularly, Boot using the bathroom several times – each time whistling something that might or might not have been Europe's The Final Countdown which had echoed shrilly from the cavernous rest room walls – as well as Pansy Parkinson breaking out into hysterical tears and wailing louder than a police siren because of something that someone had said.

Listening to noises of a party of the past that he hadn't been invited to was slightly better than the booming quiet of the Ministry at night.

The slurred, roaring laughter continued. People loudly shouted unintelligible things over each other. The hour was late by then and everyone was well and truly pissed, pissed far beyond the point of zero inhibitions and mental blackouts.

Boot had no recollection of anything except his immediate surroundings, and even those weren't very steady any more. Parkinson kept changing outfits with Bulstrode. Smith flickered in and out of the picture as if unsure if he had really been there at all. The beer level in the glasses on the table varied wildly with every turning of his head. The table, the lounge, the entire pub and seemed to be spinning while constantly being tilted, then and when jerking to the left as if for emphasis. The sound also flickered on and off, as if the headphone jack had a slack joint or Boot had occasionally had his head dunked in water. Which Harry wished someone had done. Even only watching the memory made him slightly ill.

Harry used his wand to rewind the memory several minutes to understand what exactly had brought up his name and who had said it.

His neck became hot when he realized that they were back to playing games that were harmless fun when Muggles played them.

This one was called 'Who I would go gay for'.

Zabini had enchanted an empty glass and got everyone to drink a sip from it for the vow of truth to take hold.

It seemed that both Zabini and Smith shared an interest in Robert Downey, Jr. Everyone was okay with that and just nodded sagely.  
Bulstrode met with disapproval as she confessed an attraction towards Tilda Swinton.

"First off," Smith began counting on his fingers, "she is just weird. What kind of witch is that who goes to hang with the Muggles, but at the same time she, like, refuses to blend in with'em? That's just not right. She's gettin' the Muggles confused with her witchy aura and she's clearly getting off on that and that's just not feckin' right. You know?"

"What Muggle would sleep in a glass box and have everyone else stare at'em, for Morgana's sake?" someone – possibly Boot himself – mumbled, irritated. "I mean, apart from that total tool... whatshisname? Blice. Blair. Blaine - Blaine! David Blaine."

Someone else groused, "God dammit, fuck David Blaine. What a stupid pillock."

"I'd sleep with her in a glass box any day of the week," Bulstrode shrugged and took a gulp from her bottle.

"Secondly," Parkinson interjected with a pointed index finger, "are we even sure that she's female?"

Smith nodded emphatic approval. Zabini mumbled into his glass, "frankly, I'm not convinced she's not David Bowie. Have we ever seen them in the same room together?"

"And three," Parkinson concluded, "No one lays a finger on my Swinton. That woman- man- alien- whatever it is, it's mine. Inside or out of a glass box," Parkinson pointed a very long, glittering fingernail at Bulstrode. "So get in line, girl. I would SO go gay for The Swinton. Oh yeah."

Glasses were clinked together in a toast for the "awesomness that is Tilda bloody Swinton."

Goyle denied knowing any guy he would go queer for, which also made everyone mad. Zabini made him chug the 'oath grail' and told him to sit tight for some more minutes to 'let it soak' so the potion could take 'proper hold'.

The one who finally said his name, without any hesitation and appearing decidedly more sober than anyone else in the group, was Draco Malfoy.

"Why, Harry Potter, of course." The blond shrugged with one shoulder and grinned lopsidedly.

The group laughed and spluttered in a raggedly fashion, though most of that came from Boot's defective memory.

"Damn, Dray. First you fuck the wife and then the husband? What the fuck is wrong with you, man?" Between Zabini's index and middle finger a spliff was smoking gently. He wheezed like an old man on an uphill walk and fused words together than didn't belong fused.

Harry clenched his teeth and willed Boot to look at Malfoy for an answer. It seemed to him that he had never wanted an answer so badly, not even when he had been waiting for Ginny's response to his 'Will you marry me?'

Instead, to his sweaty-palmed frustration, Boot started talking about sandwiches – a thought probably inspired by the idea of Malfoy between two people or something – in a loud voice that drowned out most of what Malfoy responded, with the exception of the last part of the last sentence.

"-I would in a goddamn heartbeat."

No matter how many times Harry rewound the recording, he couldn't catch exactly what it was that Malfoy _would in a heartbeat_. He heard him say his name. He saw him smile – grin, or was it just a grimace? – and shrug. He heard Boot obsessing about sandwiches over again, and Malfoy's voice drowned in the sea of noises only to finally come out on top again like a cork. "-I would in a goddamn heartbeat".

The inflexion, the emphases, the way he paused between the words and stretched some vowels and some consonants, it etched itself into his mind the way that _I must not tell lies_ was etched into his skin.

Boot kept talking about sandwiches - "proper mutton, lettuce and tomato sammich, the way the good Lord intended it" - which somehow made Smith talk about pizza, which in turn made everyone talk about food.

Bulstrode and Parkinson finally staggered off to get a bunch of kebabs from the booth across the street since the pub's kitchen was already closed. The game was forgotten – much to Goyle's silent relief –, and so was Malfoy's answer.

In the corner of Boot's vision, Malfoy lounged there in his chair, one leg over the armrest, a menthol cigarette in his fingers. He watched the bluish smoke as it curled out of his mouth and dispersed quickly in the turbulent air on its way towards the ceiling. Then, as if waking from a trance, he yawned and stretched like a cat and started a conversation with Flint who was sitting right next to him. As far as Harry could catch, it was about 'that brunette chick from the shop'.

Harry wanted nothing more than to be as drunk or as relaxed as them and forget all about what he had heard.

Instead, this was the thing his mind wouldn't put down.

It echoed through his skull just like his footfalls echoed through the completely deserted Ministry corridors as he made his way to the floo around twenty past three. _Harry Potter. Of course._

It was still revolving around it four hours later when he was at home – a house way too big and too beautiful for just one pathetic almost ex-husband to stay in for six to nine hours out of every twenty-four – trying to force his tired body to fall asleep already. _In a heartbeat._

The sun was already coming up again when he finally managed to.

When his alarm went off – two hours that felt more like twenty minutes later – it woke him from a very disturbing dream that involved hot breath and fingers touching feverish skin. _In a heartbeat, Harry Potter._

Touching firmly, like Ginny had always detested to be touched. Touching like she had always complained about, heavy-handedly, insensitively, without the refinement she wanted. Touching intensely. Unrestrained.

Touching to harm at first, but then intentions changed, and roles reversed. And he was being touched. He wanted and needed it so badly – for the first time ever it seemed, a touch was intense enough to made him _feel_ something.

Harry sat up and bunched his blanket in his lap, afraid and ashamed of the heat pulsing there. His unpolished wedding ring gleamed dully up at him.

/

/**TBC **(tomorrow)**  
**

_I'm sure David Blaine is a really nice person._


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: We jumped forward in time quite a bit. Also, language.

_Ooh Merlin, you people make me happy. Thanks to Tarff, Maria, Carol and SeminoleSweety (again!) for their kind and enthusiastic reviews and to Silvereyes11 and spinnerofdark for fav'ing this story. In addition, someone added it to a Community, apparently - what's up with that? (I have no idea about the social network aspects of ff dot net. Sorry. Someone enlighten me.)_

_Also: This story is finished. That is, I'm not working on it any more. I will upload a new chapter every evening - there are 12 in total, plus an epilogue.  
_

/

**-/Chapter 3/-**

/

"Harry, d'you need a minute?" Ron elbowed him out of his daydreams.

"Wh- no. No, I'm good." His friend gave him a look of concern that was usually only reserved for Hermione. Harry saw her receiving it a lot these days.

He bit back a comment along the lines of 'Ron, stop doing your helicopter dad-thing. I'm only getting divorced, it's not the end of the world. Also, unlike your girlfriend I'm not pregnant.' "Just tired, is all. Didn't get home until two this morning. Bloody Americans." he mumbled as if to himself.

Ron clearly wasn't convinced but decided to let it rest. "They have never understood the concept of time difference, Merlin love them." And he echoed Harry's "yeah, bloody Americans" before he refocussed his attention on the speaker.

The Americans – or rather, the US American Ministry staff, spiky and self-important as ever – were only partially to blame for his fatigue. While he actually had only made it home shortly after quarter past two last night, this would have left him with almost five hours he could've spent sleeping.

Instead, he had been up all night and not slept at all. He had opened a bottle of Caribbean Firewhiskey – with a delightful hint of coconut, it said on the label – smoked half a pack of cigarettes and burned several old photographs. Photographs showing his and Ginny Weasley's wedding, mainly.

The acrid smell of burning photo paper was still clinging to the back of his throat.

In one of the pictures he had burnt he even spotted the very same bottle of whiskey he was just busy draining. It had been a _wedding gift_. Well, wasn't that just ironic? More ironic than rain on your wedding day or ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, anyway. Fucking funny.

Today would be the last day he was married. Ginny had finally got around to finishing the paperwork, so that by sunset tonight, "things" would finally, conclusively be "sorted out".

When he thought about it, the fact that his divorce had lasted longer than his marriage could be even more ironic than the Firewhiskey thing, and much more ironic than a free ride when you already paid, too.

A short round of applause ripped him out of his thoughts rather roughly. He didn't even know what the clapping was for, or what the presentation had been about precisely. Something about cooperation and optimization and such. Everything was about that these days, wasn't it? Increasing efficiency. Doing away with the things that weigh you down. Out with the old. Onwards and upwards. Into the future. He clapped along without much enthusiasm.

The room spun violently when he got up and Harry felt his stomach do a flip and a half. Maybe the alcohol on an empty stomach hadn't been such a good idea after all.

"You look grey in the face, man. Are you sure you don't want to step out and get some air?"

His first impulse was brushing him off – maybe telling him to mind his own fucking business for once – but he kept his mouth shut instead.

Ron had always been his best friend. Through all the drama with Ginny, he had been as neutral as was humanly possible. He had always been there for him and simply didn't deserve his temper.

In the seconds it took to fight his meagre, northbound breakfast back down, he became aware of the fact that preparations for a post-presentation Ministry Department get-together were under way. Little clusters of people were already forming – Luna was gesturing from several ten metres away for him to come join her – and refreshments were being brought. Not much longer and they would set up tables and a buffet.

"You know, I think you're right. I'll be getting a breath of fresh air-"

"I can come with you if you want?" His best friend, not always getting the hint. Or maybe just as thrilled about Department get-togethers as he was.

"Nah, I'll be fine by myself. Need to sort something out in the archives, too – I'll do that on my way back. I'll be- just outside somewhere. Alright? Give Clara my regards, will you?" He nodded towards the speaker who stood surrounded by Aurors and other division members, answering their questions with her usual kind smile and infinite patience.

Harry liked Clara Pascoe – hell, everybody liked her, she was like the grandma everybody wanted, including the long white hair, soft hands and the perpetual faint smell of fresh-baked pie – but right now he felt he couldn't stomach her benignity. He knew she was bound to ask him how he was feeling and that was just too much to take.

He made his way to the staircase because he felt that going by lift wouldn't be wise. Climbing the uneven stairs and starting to get puffed, the weight of the all-nighter began to bear down on him with all its might. An all-nighter featuring alcohol and smoking – taking a break from his abstinence of almost a year and a half.

The whisky and the nicotine and the weariness, they had left him weak-willed, they had eroded his resolve last night.

His steps grew heavier and slower until they stopped entirely. The stairway was very quiet as he stood there, out of breath and with blood pounding in his skull, bashing his brain.

He had been so determined to forget all about it. To exorcise these thoughts and banish them forever. He had been successful for so long already, since these notions were all completely useless and inane. Wholly fatuous for a man like him who was living a life like his, always busy and under pressure in his job, and also – despite the mud-slinging in the wake of his very-soon-ex-wife's behaviour going public – he was still a role model. He couldn't just... just be-

But last night he had given them an opening and they had come flooding through.

Shaking his head vigorously made him nauseous. He moaned, set his jaw and climbed on.

Justin. He couldn't get Justin out of his head. Blond, cherubic, just-twenty-but-already-experienced Justin, fire fighter from New York City with shapely pecs roughly the size of Ginny's boobs. With his pillowy lips he had smiled a half-angelic, half-diabolical smile from the web page and for a moment Harry had himself convinced that it was aimed at him and him alone, sitting in front of his seldom-used, ancient laptop with his left hand around the neck of that bottle of Firewhiskey and his right hand-

He climbed faster as sweat started to collect in his armpits.

Justin smiled knowingly. _In nineteen hours you'll be officially divorced, you know_, his pale eyes twinkled at him through thick, almost feminine lashes. _Free and single. Footloose and fancy-free._ _Then you can finally-_

"No!" he choked out, then stopped dead in his tracks and listened with a hammering heart if someone might have heard. He thought about pretending to talk on a phone but figured that it would sound very implausible for a conversation to start with a desperate 'no!' out of nowhere. Also, phones probably wouldn't work here anyway, with all the magic thick in the air.

Somewhere further upstairs a door opened with a creak. Footsteps shuffled, during which the door fell shut with a bang. Another door. Short silence. Another bang.

A minute passed.

"What the hell am I doing?" he finally asked himself, out loud. He closed his eyes.

Justin – who probably wasn't called Justin anyway, who wasn't a fire fighter at all and who had Tom Hardy's airbrushed body convincingly attached to his head via Photoshop – popped up behind the eyelids, beckoning.

"I really don't have time for this shit," he hissed at him, suddenly angry – at what exactly, he wasn't sure. Probably at everything – and resumed his ascent, focussing on his destination – second floor – on his work, on trying not to faint and trying not to puke and on keeping this... this unwanted, impossible _stuff_ out of his life.

/

/

"You look fine. Stop tugging on that."

Draco refused to argue with his mirror image, especially not when it sounded so annoyed and whiny. He shot it a dirty look and tugged at his collar again for good measure. His reflection rolled its eyes at his childishness.

He checked his watch for the fifteenth time in the past five minutes. Still twenty minutes to go. He figured that if he showed up at the Ministry more than five minutes early, they would think he was desperate. Not that he wasn't desperate – he was. But there was no sense in letting them know that.

He tugged at his collar twice. His reflection tsk'ed so loudly that he became fed up and stepped away from the mirror entirely.

"It's just a routine announcement, Draco. Nothing much will happen, again, just like five years ago. No need to be nervous." he told himself but his own good advice went mostly unheard.

The problem wasn't the hearing itself. The idea of getting there got his heart racing quite ridiculously.

He would floo into the Ministry for the first time in almost two years. He would walk down the huge entrance hall and take a lift and the other way around on his way back. The place would be crawling with people.

And they would all recognize his face and know his name and know-

He huffed, annoyed and unnerved, took a long look around the flat – it wouldn't do to have magical attire or equipment lying around, he didn't want to have to explain either to Preston later on – then threw a fire-lighting spell and a handful of floo powder into the fireplace that hadn't been made to hold a fire at all, but was connected to the network all the same. Then he followed the powder.

One step later he found himself in the imposing atrium of the Ministry of Magic. The bustle of people was as suffocating as ever. The past years he had gotten so used to the uniformity of Muggles – their crowds were never this ragtag or disorganized. They generally tended to move into one direction only, acting like a more or less dense mass. A big wave in the ocean.

This wizard crowd was more like a boiling pot of water on the stove. One never knew where the next bubble would form, where the next drop would spill with a hiss.

And yet, despite the chaos, the hurrying and the utter confusion, Draco felt it in his gut that they were all looking at him. Unanimously sneaking glances, looking him up and down and judging him. Him and his crooked collar.

A very stooped witch walking on two crutches wearing what looked like a pasta strainer on her head lurched by him. Her pale eyes bore into him as if to say 'You. I know you. I know why you're here. I know what you do.'

Everyone wore the same look on their faces that turned towards him just as he looked away. Draco tried his hardest not to meet anyone's eyes but there seemed to be eyes everywhere, fleetingly.

He found it impossible to walk more quickly as there were human obstacles in his way whichever path he tried that slowed him down again.

The lower back of his robe was sweaty and clung to his skin and his collar seemed awfully tight when he finally made it to the lifts.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the wizards and witches waiting there with him taking in his blond hair and his face. Their mouths turned down in a scowl and their noses wrinkled.

As they waited for the damn lift to show up, Draco bit down on the tip of his tongue until it hurt. In his head, instead of doing that, staring straight ahead and maintaining a resolute silence, he was snapping at them. _What is it? Out with it!_ he yelled into the tall guy's face. _Tell me, is it because of my last name?_ he grabbed the smaller guy's shirtfront. _Huh? Is it because you dimwitted arseholes are still unable to tell the difference between me and my father?_

A cabin arrived with a _ding!_ It was already jam-packed and only one passenger struggled out of the squeeze. The small guy – with a last nervous glance at him, Draco saw – went and pressed himself into the mass only to be absorbed by it. The cabin door closed and the cabin disappeared, swiftly carrying its passengers away.

_You are an Auror, are you not?_ he demanded to know from the curly-haired witch who was clutching a bunch of huge carrots to her chest. _That means you saw Terry Boot's memory. You saw it, don't you deny it._

The witch didn't. It only made him mad.

_What I said was meant only for my friends. For no one else. How dare you interfere with my private sphere like that?!_

Somewhere behind him, someone laughed. It took all his willpower not to turn around and smack the bastard in the face with a hex.

_Stop laughing. Shut your bloody mouth. SHUT IT._

The next lift arrived. Draco stood rooted to the spot as three other people streamed past him, deciding to try and squeeze in. Judgemental looks pelted him while they were struggling to shut the door.

_So what if I'm queer. So what? So what if my boyfriend is a clueless Muggle and __two years __younger than me? So what?! He is cute and my life is perfect. Who are you to laugh at me?!_

He was breathing heavily with suppressed anger when the next cabin arrived. Maybe it was due to the rage gleaming in his eyes that no one else got on with him even though there would've been space for at least two more. They looked on with pointedly wide eyes as the door pulled shut.

_What a bunch of holier-than-thou, uber-self-righteous, judgemental bastards. Just like the Muggles._

The lift lurched into motion and carried him, five other witches and wizards and several Ministry memos upwards to the other levels of the Ministry.

People stepped in and out of the lift, many of them eyeing him suspiciously. Before long, through the natural process of people coming, going, moving around and making space, he was in the back left corner of the cabin and only had their backs to glare at.

_Or is it because of whom I would choose, if I had the choice? Do you disapprove of that, huh? The idea that your saint, after being screwed good and proper by his wifey, could fall prey to a poof next? That I would lay hands on him like no one ever did before?_

It took him a full five minutes to realize that he hadn't pushed the button for the ninth level and that they were mainly going up and down between the third and seventh floor.

"'scuse me, can I-" He moved to push past the two people in front of him, just as the lift got under way again. He ended up jostling both and elicited a rather annoyed "Oy, watch it!" from one.

The shout was cut off abruptly.

He looked round to see why and stared into the stricken face of Harry Potter.

/

/

It would have been less critical to be hit by lightning than to run into Potter, Draco reckoned. A shallow hole seemed to have formed in his gut and his heart had dropped right into it. Someone had pricked his lungs so that all the air was leaking out of him. He was deflating. His whole body was shrinking under that green-eyed stare.

The next moment, Potter blinked and turned away with a frown, looking straight ahead and a little to the side instead. As if he weren't really there.

Draco jerked back into action after freezing in mid-motion, hastily pressed his button (9th basement, twice, just to make sure) and retreated into his corner again. He found his gaze magnetically drawn by the portion of Potter's back that wasn't obscured by the wizard right in front of him.

He couldn't help but note the unkempt, long-since uncut and two, maybe three days unwashed hair, the tense way he hunched his shoulders and his wrinkled clothes. He seemed to have slept in them. The fingers of his left hand were drumming a rhythm against his left thigh, then they flexed and made a fist. Impatient? Nervous? _Itching to strangle someone again? _That made Draco tug at his collar reflexively.

He sneaked a glance at the control panel. In the meantime, they had gone up to the fifth level. One wizard and one witch exited the cabin, leaving him with a tall witch in a fur coat, and Potter.

The furry witch stepped out of the lift on the fourth floor, at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. As the doors fell shut, Draco saw an eye winking at him from the folds of the coat. Even that wink seemed somehow judgemental.

"Well, well. Long time no see, Potter." His mouth started talking immediately and mostly without his consent as the cabin set itself in motion back down the way they had just come with just the two of them in it.

Potter stiffened and turned his head until he could see him in the corner of his eye. "Could've been longer, far as I'm concerned," he mumbled back.

Unfazed by the rebuke, he went "Is that so? What a shame."

Part of him was tempted to hit himself. But a bigger part of him wouldn't stop talking. Not when he had this once-in-a-lifetime chance. "So. How's life?"

Potter looked away pointedly, then reached out and jabbed the button for the eighth floor again as if hoping that it would make the ride go faster.

"I never got so much as an apology letter for the last time I was asked to come. So I guess no one wondered about that short but charming interrogation session, huh?" _Sweet Merlin, shut up, Draco!_ _Not even fifty seconds into the 'conversation' and already you're just provoking him._ "No one ever asked what you and I did for fifteen unsupervised minutes in that room, all on our own-"

Potter finally turned towards him properly while not coming even an inch closer. His back was ramrod straight and it made him look taller than he really was. Draco found himself at the end of an angered stare out of black-rimmed, tired, bloodshot eyes and tried his best not to visibly cower under it.

"What are you trying to say, Malfoy? Are you trying to imply that you were the victim of irregular procedure? That things didn't go by the book?"

Restrained anger suddenly flared up. "You bloody jumped me, Potter, and you know it," Draco spat at him. _Of all the millions of people who shoot their mouths off about your slut of a wife, you just had to pick on me, you arsehole. And you only dared to because you knew I couldn't fight back._

He didn't get the chance to say all this because before he managed to draw enough breath to do so, Potter yelled "Jump you?! You wish, you fucking poofter!" at him.

All blood seemed to drain from Potter's face at once as he realized what he had said. His mouth snapped shut with a click. A heavy, icy silence followed.

/

/**TBC** _(tomorrow)_


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: A rather confused internal dialogue which I had way too much fun writing ahead.

_First and foremost, an apology: When I opened this 'New Story' I was given the choice by fanfiction dot net to label the story either "Complete" or "In progress", the former meaning that it is 'complete with no further additions planned', and the latter meaning that I am 'currently working on' it. Without thinking too much about it I chose "complete", because this story IS complete. On my hard-drive, that is. It is finished. Beta-read and everything. I also put "complete" in the description because of that. Under "In progress" I understand that which GRRM's "The Winds of Winter" is (and will be for the next three to ten years, damn you, George... also looking at a certain Patrick Rothfuss.)._  
_I didn't mean to lie to anyone, to deceive anyone, or to falsely advertise this silly little story of mine. It was an honest mistake._ _Apologies._

_Hence, thank you Tarff, Starflower-Gem and Lizzy Pheonix for pointing this out to me (and for the reviews in general). Further thanks to Carol, Maria and Aristotelis for their contagiously enthusiastic comments ( Maria: Sorry, but my nerves can only endure formatting one chapter at a time. Single line breaks haunt my dreams.), and to Joennea for fav'ing._

_Thanks again to Nia – the previous chapter and this one were full of elevators until you came and set me right._

_Now... story time._

/

**-/Chapter 4/-**

/

"You watched it, didn't you?" Malfoy's eyes narrowed. Harry turned away again as the Ex-Slytherin stared at him, examining his face for answers he knew wouldn't come out of his mouth. "You watched the memory you got from Boot. All the way through."

Harry felt as if he were collapsing in on himself. And dirty, he felt dirty and sick to his stomach, and that wasn't yesterday's alcohol. He feared that it might be guilt and shame. There was the taste of gall in his mouth.

He reflexively grabbed the handlebar as the lift cabin jerked to a halt. Blood was rushing in his ears.

_In a heartbeat._ This notion had struck roots that night long ago, and Malfoy was to blame. He had been busy pulling it out but it had shot up again and again. All over the place. It was a weed. Ugly, awful weed.

_Who are you calling a poofter?_ Justin asked with an obnoxious smirk. _Pot, meet kettle._

_No, _he answered._ No, it's not like that._

"You watched it and now you're scared of me." Malfoy's voice was triumphal and incredulous at the same time.

_Or is it even... pot, meet lid?_ Justin wouldn't shut up in his head.

_Harry Potter, I would in a heartbeat._

All at once, he wasn't so sure if he had heard it or if it had merely been in his head. He looked around at Malfoy, to find out if he had said it, and found himself simply staring. Staring at this face, for the first time not only looking but _seeing_. Pale skin. Eyes bright with- glee? Maybe malice? Towheaded like only children had the right to be. There was a crease between his eyebrows, carved by years of scowling and sneering, giving his face a perpetually dark expression. He looked further down and was taken aback to find his lips not twisted in a sneer, but slightly parted, as if startled.

Malfoy looked back at him, oddly wide-eyed. Speechless, just like him.

The moment was merely as long as the blink of an eye but it felt like time had slowed down and condensed itself. Only to expand again explosively, shattering that which had just taken place.

The doors slid open with a clang and two wizards entered the lift from the sixth floor, pressing in between the two of them.

Harry hesitated for a split second before ducking behind the taller one, stepping out of the cabin just as the doors were falling shut and turning right at pace that some people might have called a run. He didn't know which level he was on, or where the corridor was leading. He didn't care as long as it lead away from Draco Malfoy.

He heard rushed footsteps behind him and imagined Malfoy following him. The thought made his heart jerk in his ribcage, as if someone had given him a karate kick against it.

It jerked again when it turned out that the footsteps belonged to someone who was not Malfoy.

"This conversation is not over, Potter!" Draco yelled after over the noisy clang of the doors. The two men who had got on eyed him with open disapproval.

Draco ignored them. He leaned his forehead onto the cool wall panel and tried to make proper sense of what had just happened.

He had never been particularly good at figuring people out. His "people skills" had always been rather rusty. But this reaction- that stupefied look Potter had given him when their eyes had first met, his obvious discomfort, and lastly this show of abject terror at his own words blurting out of his mouth, that long look right before his flight – Draco couldn't help but think of them as giveaways. He was just like the guy in the television series that Preston always watched and had attempted to introduced him to some months ago.

_Poor Mark, _Preston had babbled as they sat on the sofa together_. Classic trope character. Closeted and tragically confused_, he had explained as Mark had made a scene and fled from the dinner table when his older brother, Dan, announced that he was gay and had decided to marry Brian in the States. _I just hope __Mark will get his damn act together__ before Brad dies of his cancer. But probably not. He'll probably realize just as Brad's snuffing it in a hospital bed. It's soo stupid but I'm going to cry like a little bitch._

The what-ifs made him dizzy. The more he tried to not let them get to his head, the more they did.

He missed his floor – ninth basement, for to get to the courtrooms at tenth - and ended up walking the stairs from seventh. The physical exertion certainly wasn't the only reason his heart was still thumping like a drum when he arrived at the courtroom, ten minutes late.

/

/

"... that given the circumstances under which the provisional verdict was reached on September 25th, 1998, which clearly intended to offer a full pardon to Lucius Malfoy, born on-"

_Why would he be scared, what would he be scared of, if not that he might actually-_

_The press would probably know if he were with someone, and I would've heard about through Pansy or Blaise, king and queen of gossip._

_Was it last week that Weasley announced that she got together with that Beater from Wales? Something-something Davies. The one that Millie has had the hots for since seventh year._

_Potter and Weasley will never get together again, that's for sure. He's not a complete tool._

_Well, is he with someone else, though?_

_He wasn't wearing a ring or a necklace or anything, as far as I could see. Not that that means anything._

"...fter two appeals that were both defeated, the first on the 11th of May, 1999, the second on 26th of November of the same year, the accused and his attorney, Mr John Furqswath Skinner, decided to accept the Wizengamot's offer to settle..."

_If he is with someone, that someone needs some serious talking-to for letting a partner leave the house in that state. If I were that person, I would make sure he got enough sleep. I would take better care of him-_

_Merlin, Draco. Stop that. It's unhealthy._

He closed his eyes and breathed in and out. He imagined green meadows and a beach in the summer until he could hear the birds sing and the waves rush.

He opened his eyes again and accepted his brain's open invitation to a good old-fashioned conversation with himself.

_You're never going to be with Harry Potter._

_Great opening, _he retorted.

"...reful investigation and study of the changing laws and obligations to the Wizarding community of England have shown a-"

_Well, why not?_

_Are you insane? He hates you._

_So what? I hate him, too. Doesn't stop me from wanting him to fuck me._

_He's not queer._

_What about his reaction in the lift?_

_That wasn't his homosexuality showing, you moron, it was disgust. Your life isn't a romcom in which loathing turns into passion somewhere around the forty five minute mark._

_That wasn't disgust. He was clearly scared and confused. Maybe even '_tragically closeted'._ Straight people don't react like that._

At least he didn't think they did.

_What, you think your raging charisma awakened a sudden desire for cock that he was so overwhelmed by that he had to flee the scene?_

_If you put it like that-_

"...in the time between the last hearing on August 2nd, 2004 and today, two relevant paragraphs were modified by unanimous vote of the Wizengamot in the plenary session on..."

_And even if he were gay, he's certainly not gay for you._

_One can always at least _try_._ _What do I have to lose?_

_Except your friends, the last shreds of an already really shitty reputation, your dignity and your mind, you mean?_

_Well-_

_Oh, and your life. If I may remind you, last time you came too close to him, he almost killed you._

_Screw all that. I want Potter._

He turned his eyes to the ceiling. Sometimes there was just no way not to hate oneself. Especially when one's true self could be such a pain in the arse. Such a sobering let-down. _Here I am. The great Draco Malfoy. I was on the verge of having the entire world, yet now... I just want Potter._

If he were all honest with himself, this wasn't a recent thing. On the contrary, he clearly remembered the event some years ago that marked the beginning of this dreary chapter. The moment Zabini's oath had made him say Potter's name, even though the question had been Patil, Clearwater, Granger or Weasley. He couldn't have said any of theirs. The oath spell wouldn't have let him. And there hadn't even been another name on his mind. It was always ever Potter.

In retrospect it was so obvious. Potter had been an underlying theme forever, a red thread snaking itself through his entire life. Ever since that party, this theme was louder and more pervasive, the red was more vibrant and impossible to overlook, like a traffic light. So much so that he had chosen to give up the fight against Potter's constant yet perpetually untouchable presence and instead had tried to build his life around it, more or less successfully, trying to ignore what he couldn't change.

But now he couldn't ignore it any more.

"The second relevant paragraph, subparagraph 231 C, subphrases one to three and six to seven, clearly state that, only and exclusively for the purpose of a suspended judgement, such as was explicitly not in effect for this case due to..."

_What do you want to do now? Write anonymous love letters? Stalk him? Compose a song and hope he'll hear it on the radio? Write bad slash fanfiction and forward it to his e-mail account hoping he'll get the hint?_

He nibbled the tip of his thumb. What _could_ he do, really? Potter and him might as well not inhibit the same planet. Potter's life and his had zero overlaps.

_Except, hypothetically, a shared interest in dicks, eh?_

"Gosh, shut up," he breathed, winced, looked around if anyone had heard and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that, apparently, no one had. The guy in the wig droned on, telling a tedious story to an almost empty courtroom. The court reporter was the only one who seemed completely awake but that might be due to the very large cup of Starbucks that rested on his desk.

_You didn't answer my question. Your question. Our... Whatever. _The_ question. What do you want to do now?_

_I don't care how. I just want him._

_That's not an answer, though, is it?_

"... have unanimously, by vote of two hundred fourteen of yay, sixteen of nay, five abstentions and one null vote due to, ah, decease, to continue the provisional custodial sentence of the accused in the same manner without further notice until the date of August 2nd, 2014. This verdict may be revised within a fortnight of its official publication via the Department of Legislative Chronicals..."

_Yes. In a way, it is._

Draco noted the year, the one information he had came here for, and stood. His knees were stiff and popped loudly as he straightened them, imminently reminding him of the fact that he was getting old.

With a last nod towards Mr Skinner whom he had spotted in the second last row – bent over what looked suspiciously like an iPad for almost the entire time – he left the courtroom and made his way up the stairs.

There was a lightness that always came with having come to a conclusion and having made a decision, Draco found. No matter how shitty and bleak the prospects were – things seemed simpler when you had settled for one of them.

He had settled for two. The one could not happen without the other.

And he even already knew how to mediate between the two.

His brain wasn't very happy with that and raised several stern objections. He decided to vigorously ignore it. _Shut up_, he told it. _I've had enough of waiting. I want Potter. I will have him._

/

/

"I'm home!"

The door fell shut noisily. A rustle of cloth and two dull thumps told him that a jacket and shoes were taken off.

Preston strolled into the kitchen, looking so splendid and young in his suit and tie, talking carelessly about his day like he always did, about clients and his annoying boss and horrible London traffic. Even though he had had a long day, there was a spring in his step. Everything about him looked so _blithe_.

When he leaned in for a kiss, Draco got up and went to the fridge instead to avoid those lips.  
"Is everything alright, love?" Preston had fallen silent, suspicious. Upon receiving no answer except for a wordless sigh, he asked, with an audible uneasiness in his voice, "You found out about the meeting with Sam two nights ago, didn't you? I honestly wanted to tell you but there was really nothing at all to tell and you were so preoccupied with- I don't even know what. Work, I suppose. I keep telling you that him and I-"

"Preston," Draco interrupted him, "stop. Please."

Something about the tone of his voice sent an uncomfortable shiver down Preston's spine. He noted, subconsciously, that he had never heard that voice. Not really.

Draco shut the fridge door with his hip and leaned against it, a cold bottle of beer in his hand.

"There's something I must speak with you about," the foreigner in his boyfriend's body said with that unusual inflexion. He lifted his gaze to stare at him but Preston could see that he was looking right through him.

He had always known that there was something about this Drake Malcolm with the impossibly blond hair, the unplaced accent and the sketchy past, something hidden from sight although it was always in the corner of his eye. He just hadn't expected this _something_ to one day show up like this in plain view and broad daylight, unannounced.

This unknown thing had swallowed his beautiful blond mystery man completely and taken his place.

He suddenly had the urge to run. To cover his ears and leave.

"You know," Preston started feebly into the continuing silence, "I think I might have forgotten an important case file at the office-"

"This won't work any more," Draco said quietly but he might as well have shouted. It sure silenced his opposite.

"And... And by 'this', you mean...," Preston prompted eventually, his mouth dry.

"I mean everything." Draco sighed and took a bottle opener from a drawer. The bottle top yielded easily. The cold cloud of the beer's sour odour that reached his nostrils made him want to gag.

"I am sorry, Preston. I- I truly am. I don't know why I did this to you. I used you... I let things go way too far."

Preston pulled his tie loose. "You- you mean our moving in together was... too hasty?" He still couldn't seem to breathe properly.

"I should never have- I _used_ you," he repeated and closed his eyes. "You look like him."

Preston would have preferred a slap in the face with a mallet. "Him?" he croaked, "Who's 'him'?"

"An old enemy of mine," Draco explained looking down into his bottle. "I grew up hating him without knowing him and when we finally met he was so... disappointing. Looked completely unremarkable. It didn't make sense, he didn't deserve my resentment at all. He didn't look... special. Just a scrawny little kid." He smiled absent-mindedly. "He's not so scrawny now and turned out fucking special and remarkable enough."

"So... you're saying I'm scrawny?" He tried to make light of it but his comment just served to jolt Draco out of his thoughts and the little smile on his face gave way to a sorrowful and slightly patronizing scowl.

"Well, you're a twink, Preston, even if you're already twenty-five. Also, you're green-eyed, although not green-eyed enough. And dark-haired, but it's dyed. Not to mention far too well-kept. And the glasses – when we first met you were wearing glasses."

"I could wear them again... if you wanted me to," he finished in a voice so low and thin that it was almost a whisper. "Are you breaking up with me, Drake?"

"My name isn't Drake, it's Draco. Draco Malfoy." He paused. "And yes, I am."

Preston knew very well how it felt to be dumped. He had been dumped by Emily Blanchard in fifth grade – their relationship had mainly been based on a shared interest in Pogs and lasted an awkward fortnight and three days –, and by Andrew Whittingham during his first year at Oxford.

Andrew had been his first true love. He had been tall, manly and beautiful. His chin had looked to be chiselled straight out of rock and every one of his smiles had been like a sunrise. They had dated for over a year and he had been perfect, _they_ had been perfect, everything had been just perfect.

The break-up on the other hand had been of the harsh and dirty type. It still haunted him and he was resigned to the sickening fact that it would be doing so as long as he lived because people never forgot their first love, didn't they? He feared that he would never stop thinking about the things he had gone through, the things Andrew had said to him. They would always be looming right over his shoulder.

In his head, whole scenarios existed of Andrew showing up on his doorstep one day, asking – begging – him to take him back. His imaginary self usually turned him down fiercely and in a variety of hurtful ways, shouting all those words at Andrew's chiselled, tear-streaked face that hadn't made it out of his dumbstruck mouth many years ago and were still bottled up inside of him.

So Preston Taylor knew how being dumped was supposed to feel like. Especially when the one dumping him was a person he had actually started to feel deeply for. He had moved in with Drake – Draco? What kind of name was that anyway? – for a reason, after all. He had dared to introduce him to his best friends and even to his mother. And she had approved of him, for God's sake, even though he wasn't a Christian. There were no money issues, no cigarette, or alcohol, or other drug issues. There wasn't even a hint of abusiveness about this man - he barely even used swearwords. There were no past relationships still lingering in the doorway.

Now that he thought of it, there was nothing much of a past lingering in Drake's... Draco's doorway at all. Had he ever talked about his youth at all? Preston wasn't sure. But it hadn't even seemed important. His boyfriend was handsome and sexy, eloquent, well-read and quick-witted, all with a side of mysterious that hadn't gone rotten (like it had with Jamie who was better left unmentioned) and never seemed threatening up until now. He was everything he could ever have asked for.

He should be feeling loss, and lost, seeing this almost magical human being walk out of his life.

But he didn't feel like that. He didn't feel hurt, or angry, or even empty and numb.

Somehow, he was confused and afraid. Almost like the one time he had come home to his old flat and found the front door standing wide open. He had been literally frozen to the spot at the end of the hallway for over ten minutes, unable to move forward or backward, just staring at that gaping portal to everything he had ever owned and valued, suddenly so precarious. It was a recurring nightmare.

A nightmare he was just living through while wide awake.

"Okay," he uttered haltingly. "Uhm. If you feel that way-"

"I do." Draco nodded. "Don't get me wrong, Preston, you're a wonderful man. But I don't love you the way you deserve to be loved, and I treated you like shit even though you haven't noticed it. I used you as a substitute for him and that just has to stop. For your sake, and for mine."

Draco put the opened beer bottle on the counter without having taken even one sip from it. He was certain his stomach wouldn't be able to handle it. It was squirming like a nest of maggots as he added with an audible tremor in his voice, "I'm going to confess to him, you know?"

"Really?" Preston had taken a step back without wanting to. In all the fourteen months that he had known Drake Malc- Draco Malfoy, he had never seen his eyes so alight and his pale face so flushed.

"Yes. To his face." He gestured breathlessly. "He might kill me – or... or worse, recoil. But I have to do it, I just have to. I ran into him today at the Ministry and there's a... a _very_ slim chance that- he actually might... we might-" He ran his hand through his hair, not even able to say it out loud because the whole idea already sounded preposterous in his head. He laughed a laugh that sounded like a mad man's, even to himself.

"Well, then. I think I cannot do much more than wish you best of luck with him, eh?" Preston was still moving backwards although he didn't know what his destination was. Maybe the front door. But where would he run? He _was_ already home. _This_ was his home.

"Actually, I'm afraid there's one last thing you will do for me."

The last two coherent thoughts Preston's head would hold for the coming forty-two hours were 'What's he going to need that stick for?' and 'Jesus Christ, he's gone mad!'

/

/**TBC** _(tomorrow)_


	5. Chapter 5

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: Every single movie featuring an interrogation scene might suddenly flash before your eyes.

_Lots of thanks you, silent, anonymous reader. I like you, too._

/

**-/Chapter 5/-**

Field work was one of the few things about his job that Harry truly loved doing. Oddly, it reminded him of his Quidditch team days, even though it was a lot less playful, frequently involved waiting, waiting, pins and needles in various extremities, and some more waiting, and usually had the potential to end in serious disaster.

After a mission that had taken a lot of energy – both its planning and execution – and then gone well and clean, when there was nothing left to say, his team would settle for a deeply comfortable silence.

He felt like the wizards and witches in his team were extensions of himself. Looks, gestures and body language were more than enough for communication.

It was nice to be understood once in a while, even if only on the basest, most instinctual level. It was nice not to have to talk.

They were strolling into the Ministry through the Atrium which was almost empty by now since it was already midnight – still in formation without really noticing – and headed for the kitchen in the Auror's department. The after-mission- butterbeer was an important part of winding down. People needed to uncouple from each other and to wash away the residual adrenaline with some alcohol, start talking normally and about normal things again.

However, when he spotted the pudgy figure of Donald Eyford waddling towards him, he already knew that his butterbeer would have to wait a little longer.

"Potter, finally! Didn't you get my owl?" He caught his upper arm with his surprisingly strong grip and pulled him out of the group – thereby destroying the formation, everyone felt – and a little to the side. Harry followed reluctantly while the other exchanged deploring looks. _No butterbeer tonight._ He sighed. "No," he answered monosyllabically, knowing that Donald wouldn't care for further explanations either way.

"We've been waiting for you to get here all day. Beebee and Jackson have caught themselves a guy who's been found meddling with some Muggles' memories early this morning."

Bertha 'Beebee' Kinney and Eddie Jackson were patrollers in the Auror department. Harry had a nodding acquaintance with them.

"Strange story altogether. The bastard has been refusing to talk all day, says he'll only talk to you."

Harry frowned. "Why would you need him to talk? Sounds clear-cut to me – he tinkered with Muggles. Just get him to the penal court, why don't you?" _Since when is basic interrogation my job?_

"Sure, Potter, sure. In time. But first we'd like to hear the story. Makes the paperwork much easier, you see."

Don's attitude towards paperwork and correctness was probably the reason why he was functionally Head Auror. Not in his worst nightmares would Harry ever have imagined how much pushing of paper (not to mention licking of boots) was involved in that job.

At the start of his career – long, long years ago, fresh out of the Second Wizarding War – people would've bet everything they had that Harry would be holding this office before the year was over. Hell, he would have bet his entire fortune on it himself. But things had happened. Things had changed.

Harry had settled for working as a foot soldier for as long as they wanted him. In the precious few moments after a successful mission, he enjoyed it greatly and couldn't bear picturing himself doing what Don did all day long instead.

The downside of this was that he had to suffer himself being dragged off by the arm and hindered from consuming a well-deserved post-mission beer with his unit. For no good reason at all. Like a twenty six year old little kid.

"Veritaserum?" he suggested, rubbing his forehead in annoyance. The after-mission-glow was wearing off quickly now. He was getting tired and headachy.

"Oh, come on, Potter. Why waste money on non-renewable resources? He demanded to talk to you, and he'll do that for free. So let's try that first, a'ight?"

Money. Typically Don.

Harry sneaked a peek at his watch and rubbed his eyes. "Right now? Doesn't this have time until tomorrow?"

Don didn't even wait for him to finish the sentence. "He's in IR two. Refused to eat all day, too. You go in, you talk, you leave. Probably won't take half an hour. Also, properly speaking it already _is_ tomorrow."

Harry sighed. Things never were as easy as Don said because Don spent so much time behind his desk that he didn't know how reality looked like up close. Five months ago he had sent him and two colleagues to Scotland for a 'quick job'. The mission had taken almost two weeks, long enough for one of the colleagues to make the acquaintance of a local girl. The wedding was due next spring and a baby was under way already, too.

"Alright. Yes, alright. Whatever. Half an hour. Room two, you said?"

"Splendid. I know I can count on you, Potter. Good man. Yes, room number two."

"'course you can, Don." Harry forced a smile. "What's the name?"

"Uh- Malfoy. The junior, naturally."

The smile was wiped right off his face.

/

/

His watch said twenty to one. He had taken almost ten minutes on the staircase, going down and up and down again and standing on a step listening to his own breathing, and now he had been sitting here in the room behind the one-way mirror for fifteen, almost twenty minutes.

Malfoy was staring into empty space, as if lost in thoughts, unaware of his presence. Like almost all people he seemed very small sitting at an intentionally outsized table on an intentionally oversized and uncomfortable chair.

Harry found he couldn't look at him for long. His eyes seemed to slip into his direction, like water towards a drain. It irritated him and made him feel stupid.

_Harry Potter, in a heartbeat. _

He wiped his hands on his trousers. He considered putting his gauntlets back on and storming into the room in full field work gear, demanding an explanation at wand-point.

Before he could decide on way or another, Morris was back with the case files Harry had sent him to fetch. Despite the late hour he seemed delighted to be of service to Harry Potter, Auror 1st class, of tainted by still considerable fame.

"Here you are," the half-timer said and laid the cases out on their regular-sized table. He even explained what they contained and where he had found them, even though it said so right on the covers. MALFOY LUCIUS [Az YX391]; B2199-02. MALFOY LUCIUS [Az YX391]; B2204–02. MALFOY LUCIUS [Az YX391], B2209-02. The latter file consisted of only a handful of papers and was still brand-new while the former, as wide as a thumb, had already lost some of its colour and gained a few dog-ears.

"Thanks, Morris. I owe you," Harry said and opened the newest of the three files. It contained a declaration from the chroniclers' office, dated only yesterday, regarding the extension of Lucius' prison term until further notice.

Morris waited for a minute as Harry pretended to read the report until he took the hint.

"Okay, then. I'll leave you to it, eh? Just take him up to process when you're done with him, they have someone for night shift there. Probably Gabby or Tosh. They already have his wand at the confis." He paused to give him an opportunity for a response but got none. "I guess you want to work alone? Even though that's not exactly protocol-"

"That'd be fantastic, Al," Harry interrupted and beamed at him. Al blinked, visibly confused by the broad smile.

"Say, are we the only Aurors here at this time of day or can I expect someone else showing up anytime soon?" he inquired before Al could slip out the door.

"Uhm. No, everyone down here's gone home, so-"

"Alright," he said and delved back into the utterly boring and irrelevant court report in front of him.

When he looked back up, Morris had left. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Malfoy covering his mouth as he yawned.

For a second he really wanted Morris to come back. That thought made him cringe.

"What's the matter with you, Potter?" he asked himself out loud and rubbed his eyes, and went to close the door that Al had left standing open from the inside.

Then he got back to the loose papers once more. Preston Marius Taylor, 25, litigation assistant trainee at GMK. His mother, Louise Elizabeth Taylor, 51, nursery school teacher. Kate Wilkins and Mercedes Velazquez, both 24, students, engineering and social sciences and politics. All Muggles, all extremely ordinary. Currently under supervision at St. Mungo's because of slight memory damage and memory loss, caused by several spells. Cast, by all accounts, by Draco Lucius Malfoy sometime in the last 48 hours.

Harry gathered the photos of the four people – moving pictures, taken in St. Mungo's, which showed each person gaping owlishly at their surroundings – and the papers detailing their uninteresting lives together and refastened the paper clip.

Next, he forced himself into composure, cast a spell into the room to simulate a muted but audible conversation, and finally stepped into the interrogation room where Malfoy was waiting for him.

/

/

Malfoy appeared to jump out of his skin before he jumped out of his chair. "Finally!" he almost shouted.

Harry closed the door behind him which cut off the fake sounds of conversation. The oppressive silence of the room made his pulse sound very loud. It was racing. Was it just him or did they actually charm the air in these rooms to be thinner? To increase discomfort? Last time he hadn't noticed. He tried to turn around and towards Malfoy without actually looking at him.

Malfoy cleared his throat and tugged at his collar which seemed already rather askew. "I mean, I'm glad you came. I wasn't sure if the Ministry would negotiate with, ah, terrorists."

Harry lifted an eyebrow. "You're not a terrorist. Just a lousy assailant of Muggles, apparently." With a lazy gesture, he threw the papers and photos down on the table so they skidded across it and fanned open. "Why, Malfoy? What have they ever done to you?"

Malfoy looked down at the photo nearest to him, that of Preston Taylor blinking into the world like a newborn babe under the influence of magic, then back up at him. "I'll tell you. I'll sign as many confessions as you wish, too. But first I would- I would ask for your patience. I need to... there's a story I want you to hear."

"Malfoy, what is the-" he started with a roll of his eyes, but Malfoy interrupted him.

"I _deserve_ that much after all that has happened," he pressed anxiously. "In March last year. And only yesterday."

"The _Ministry_ might negotiate with criminals if it's cheaper than the alternative. Me? Not so much," Harry growled between gritted teeth.

Yesterday – now the day before yesterday, to be exact, but Malfoy had been cooped up in here and didn't know it was already past midnight – was still too fresh.

The day of his divorce, the day he had lost his wife and not felt a thing.

The day he had lost his dignity to a bottle of whiskey, on the internet, and finally in a lift. He hadn't regained his balance yet although he was unable to say if he had lost that only yesterday, or a long time ago already.

And the ten-minute interrogation almost two years back wasn't something he was very proud of, either. He had blown a fuse and acted with haste. He didn't like to be reminded of it.

Malfoy hesitated, then visibly backed down. He sat and was instantly dwarfed by the table. He suddenly looked like a helpless kid. "Ten minutes. That's all I'm asking."

_This is going to be just like Don saying 'half an hour'. _Harry turned to the one-way mirror and looked into his own tired face. _I'm going to regret this_, his eyes seemed to say. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes again. "Fine," he said quietly, then repeated "Fine. Ten minutes" a little louder.

He could see Malfoy squeezing his eyes shut in the mirror and soundlessly mouthing, "Thank you."

A short silence followed.

He turned from the reflection to the real Malfoy and found him wrestling with words. Eventually, his shoulders sagged in defeat. He looked up at him with a smile that looked almost sad and said simply "I want you, Potter."

/

/

"I don't even care that they're listening and that it's being recorded. For the record and the audience: Yes, I am homosexual. I have been for all my life, I have suspected – dreaded – ever since my very awkward first time with Pansy Parkinson. I am queer. Gay. A fag. A bloody poofter. All of it, accurate."

Draco let the words rush and tumble out of his mouth before they changed their mind. Or before Potter changed his. The Auror was currently standing there like a deer in headlights.

"Like most who grew up in, uhm, not necessarily supportive surroundings, I was in denial for a very long time. But now I'm not any more. I even got myself a boyfriend. Now ex-boyfriend." He reached for Preston's photo and held it up for Potter to see. "Look, that's him."

If Potter had seen, he didn't let it show.

"That night of Greg's stag night, the one you have Boot's memory of, was the night I had planned to come out to my friends," he continued after having dropped the photo again without a second glance at it. "Got cold feet, mostly. Not drunk enough, hence not enough courage. Missed the opportunity."

He remembered it vividly, the words pushing upwards and out of his mouth. _And fuck Potter._ The spell's clutch had let go, a sudden cold dread had overcome him, a hasty decision was made in a split-second. _-Weasley. I suppose._ Laughter. He remembered the awful tension in his chest breaking unevenly, the lingering dissatisfaction he tried to drown in japes and witticism, and the way he had tried to be swept away by the drunken, worry-free easiness of the people around him. Tried without succeeding. That name. Of all names, it had to be that one. As if it wouldn't have been hard enough in principle already.

"But you-" Potter started and immediately reeled his words back in.

Draco guessed what he had wanted to say. "But I... did spill the beans eventually? Well, I was under oath. Zabini's oath spells are quite potent. It's just not the same when you're forced to. Also, everyone considered it a joke... if they were sober enough to consider anything at all."

From what he knew, neither Greg nor Zach remembered anything that had happened after 9 p.m. that evening. They still referred to it as the greatest night out ever, although never with Pansy in attendance because she had ended up with barf on her most expensive shoes and felt very differently about it.

"But that spell forced me to admit something that I had never consciously known until then. I realized that I wanted _you_. _You_ specifically. It was your name that came to me immediately when I was asked. I've wanted you for years."

He looked down on his hands. They were steady which gave him hope.

"I remembered all the times I saw your photo in the newspaper, or heard someone mention you, and how it always bothered me so much. I couldn't help but react to it, like- like a bull to a red cloth. You're just under my skin. I thought it was contempt, but I finally made sense of that. It just clicked. I'm an idiot for not realizing it much sooner." Looking back, nothing was more obvious.

"But then, after that, you just started to be everywhere. Wherever I turned in the wizarding world, you were omnipresent – you were before as well, but then it was just... different. It drove me so mad that I went to live with the Muggles because it gave me a chance to flee this Potter and Weasley hype. I told myself that there were other reasons, that I did it because I was tired of people judging me because of my last name, and tired of- of hiding what I am. But that was... You were the main reason, the true one. I needed to get away from _you_. And then I hooked up with a Muggle boy just because he looked a bit like you when I squinted. Can you imagine that?" He exhaled through his nose, in an approximation of a bitter laugh. "I'm completely fed up with you, and at the same time I'm like an obsessed fangirl, dating a guy because of a faint resemblance. It's pathetic – I'm pathetic. You have made me pathetic, Potter. You're- it's killing me and I'm finally done with it. I just needed you to know that and I- and I also kind of wanted to see you," he finished quickly with the last of his breath.

For long, long moments there was no sound at all but the hammering of his heart in his chest, his stomach, his throat and his head. His heartbeat filled out every little space under his skin.

He willed himself to not have a nervous breakdown right now and to look at Potter steadily.

After some more moments of stony silence, he ground his teeth to keep from shouting _Say something!_ at him. _But for Merlin's sake, don't just say whatever. _

He set his jaw and pleaded with his eyes. And waited for the judgement.

/

/**TBC** (tomorrow)

_Leave a comment. Judge me._


	6. Chapter 6

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: If this doesn't make any sense, that's because people often don't make sense. Also, because my writing is inadequate. Sorry. Don't be frustrated. I'm frustrated enough for the both of us.

_Cheers to Fireaquila for a comment that is wonderfully tragic (because of what'll happen...), and to Eriru-chan170, angelforbesmarch and dcfg21 for fav'ing. Also, thanks to my followers - there are twelve of you now, so I totally could either become a wandering preacher and start a religion or make a football team with you. (The latter would be more fun, and I'd readily volunteer for substitute or cheerleader... goooOO READERS!) Seriously, thanks to all of you._

/

**-/Chapter 6/-  
**

/

Harry felt the room sway under his feet.

_I want you. _

The idea made his head spin in two directions at a time.

_He's lying. _

_Might even be a press thing. How would I know?_

_I've wanted you for years._

He suppressed the urge to shake his head like a dog to make the thoughts stop. Instead, he braced himself, breathed in and forced a coherent, audible sentence out of his dry mouth.

_I will not be mocked. Not by you._

"So... Preston Taylor was a boyfriend who you wanted to dump, so you decided to blast yourself out of his head?"

Malfoy gaped at him, wide-eyed, and then crumpled. He leaned back in his too-big chair with a defeated sigh and looked down onto his lap.

"I assume you then went to do the same with his mother and his two best friends? Everyone he introduced you to, to erase yourself from his life. That's..." He searched for a word. "That's insidious. Even for you-"

"Can you _please_ at least acknowledge what I just said?!" Malfoy suddenly yelled at him with a fury he hadn't seen coming at all. Harry's right hand flew to his belt to grab his wand out of reflex.

Malfoy caught the movement and stood up from his chair. "Yes, draw that wand. Draw it! Point it at me. _Do_ something. Put your hands round my throat and strangle me again, _anything_!" He took a step towards him, then another. "Show me that you heard me and that you understood-"

"I heard you!" he snapped back. His voice was threatening to do corkscrews. "Alright? I heard you. And I understood it's bullshit." _Just admit it._

Malfoy froze in his tracks, then frowned at him. "What?"

"It's bullshit," he repeated. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Feelings, Potter," Malfoy snarled at him with indignantly narrowed eyes. "I'm certain I'm talking about my actual _feelings_, in front of the person I'm having them for, even though it was a stupid bloody idea. I just thought this person would give a fuck."

Harry chose to ignore the fact that Malfoy actually looked hurt and barked "sit down" at him. He turned away and looked in the mirror again.

_You're not serious. You cannot be. A bad joke. I cannot-_

"It seems you're obsessed with the notion that you're attracted to me," he explained slowly, more to his own reflection than to Malfoy, and added "Not like you're the first." There was a bitter taste in his mouth. "And it all started with Zabini's party game. It's obvious that something went wrong with the spell."

"Potter, you're not implying that I feel like this because of a botched party spell years ago, are you?" Malfoy was incredulous. He had sat back down again, as if the assertion had caused his life energy to seep away all at once.

"It doesn't even have to be the direct effect of the spell. It could merely be an echo. Also, the spell could've come out utterly weird. Zabini was high as a kite when he cast it," Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Goyle didn't answer either-"

"That's because Goyle just so happens to be one of the few completely straight people on the planet." Harry could hear rather than see the rolling of the eye. "He has never had a gay thought in his life."

"You were drunk that night," Harry insisted after a pause. "Inebriation interfered with the spell and-"

"I was no such thing." The tone of his voice was resolute. "I had half an already watered-down butterbeer for the first toast and from then on I only drank nonalcoholics. I was very damn close to completely stone-cold sober. Not only for the coming-out which I planned to get over with as gracefully as possible – even though that ended up in conflict because I didn't manage without liquid courage – but I also needed to be sober for my-uhm, my driver's test the next morning." He added a small "which I passed with flying colours, by the way."

"A driver's test," Harry couldn't help but repeat and gave Malfoy a pointed look.

"Yes, a driver's test, Potter. You know, that Muggle qualification check, and when you pass it you get a piece of plastic and then you're legally allowed to drive a car? On a road?" Malfoy crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Yes, I own a car. _And_ I can drive it. And it's fantastic. More fun, in fact, than apparating and flooing. Better than a broom for long distances, or in bad weather, or when you have luggage, or when you have a Muggle boyfriend to convince that you're Average Joe. I can't believe that I have to defend myself like this. This isn't magic, it's just _me_. Potter, I _want_ you, and I mean it. I demand you believe me."

Harry turned to his own reflection again and looked it in the eye. It grimly stared back at him and offered no advise as to how to get out of this situation. It also didn't know what to do or how to feel. His hands were trembling, even though he had clenched his fists and pressed them against his thighs.

/

/

Draco got out of his chair and walked up to him until they stood side by side an arm-length apart, both looking into the mirror. In the corner of his eye he could see dark, fuzzy shadows in the glass that reminded him of the people standing behind it but every time tried to catch them they seemed to slip away. _Shadows of the past_, he involuntarily thought.

"You don't want me to be attracted to you." He put his hands in his pockets and looked Potter's reflection in the face. "I can relate to that. People's attention can be unsettling. I got Pansy's attention once, for Merlin's sake, it was downright traumatizing." He grimaced, then was serious again. "But you. You don't just- don't want it. It's not just 'eww, no, thanks'. In fact, it _scares_ you."

As if to prove the point, Potter flinched away from direct eye contact.

"Just like yesterday," Draco went on, not allowing Potter to protest, "on the lift, when you ran away. Why? Why did you do that?"

"I didn't run away." Potter interjected.

"No, you just wanted to say Hi to the guys from magical transport and had a really urgent question about the floo network, Mr Auror man," he couldn't help but tease. He reiterated emphatically "You _ran_ _away_. From me. And it wasn't just embarrassment either."

This time, Potter didn't object. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them with his sleeve until they were spotless. And then he cleaned them some more.

Draco frowned, unsure of what this seething silence meant. He decided to continue with the softest voice at his disposal. "Please help me out here, Potter? The potential meaning of things is driving me completely insane."

"Potential meaning?" Potter had put his glasses back on. Behind them, his eyes were cold as stone. The look was piercing. Draco felt his stomach drop an inch.

"I just thought..." He trailed off.

"You just thought what, Malfoy?" Potter snapped at him. "That me running away, as you so succinctly put it, was a- a sign of sexual attraction in disguise? Of- of affinity?"

"I didn't-" _Actually, I did._

"Where I am from, when people run away from you, it means they don't want anything to do with you."

He said it in a normal volume but Draco's ears were ringing as if he had shouted.

"And _that_ is the only meaning behind my actions."

As if to observe the words sinking in, Potter stared at his face, angry and pale. His eyes were a red-rimmed testament to a long and wearing day. For a split second, Draco feared he would punch him.

"I am _not_ like you," he said, every word like a crack of a whip. "I stepped out of the lift because I couldn't stand the closeness."

He didn't specify if he meant the general closeness of the cramped cabin, or the closeness to him. But if Draco were entirely true with himself, he knew which one he was talking about.

He also didn't elaborate what he meant by 'not like you', but Draco felt it as if he had taken a lungful of ice-cold air.

"If you want an apology for my affront, I could have one written by tomorrow afternoon and send it to you by owl. It would probably come in the same envelope as the invite for your court session."

With that, Potter turned and went to the table to collect the scattered papers one by one.

One moment to the next, Draco knew that he had lost. He didn't know how it had happened, exactly, because it had happened very fast, but it was definite.

"So- that's it?" Draco found himself asking Potter's back. He felt hollow. If someone stabbed him, he wouldn't bleed but deflate. Or burst, like a balloon.

"Yeah, that's it, Malfoy," Potter replied as he straightened the papers with a vigorous motion. "What else did you expect?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted after a pause. There was a lump in his throat that wouldn't go away when he swallowed. "Maybe I hoped that, if I laid it all on the line and were completely honest and truthful, then-"

"Truthful!" Potter suddenly burst out and glared at him. "Ask Preston here about truthfulness."

Draco was startled by the sudden change of topic and leaped to defend himself. "I was trying to be compassionate to him."

Once it was out of his mouth he wished he could unsay it. All at once he understood how Potter had felt yesterday in the lift.

"Your idea of compassion is about as accurate as your idea of 'potential meaning'," Potter seethed. "You thought you would just come waltzing in here, after what you did to these four innocent people, stage this drama – _I'll only talk to Potter, I will not eat or sleep until I've talked to Potter,_who the hell do you think you are, IRA? –, declare your- your _feelings_ for me or whatever it is and expect that I'll, what? Be flattered and throw myself at you?!"

_No. No, only a lunatic would've thought that. _

"What else could I have done?" Draco wouldn't have admitted how close he suddenly was to tears. Everything was going so wrong. "How could I have got through to you? You and I share nothing except a shitty history. I don't know why my attentions fixed themselves on you, of all people, it doesn't make a lick of sense. And- and it's not like I haven't tried to change that. Repeatedly. Without success. Despite the fact that you hate me and almost offed me once, and the fact that I loathe you, I still... bloody... _want_ you."

He raked through his hair with both hands in frustration. Potter looked on with that angry crease between his eyebrows deepening.

"What can I do? For you to give me a single- _measly_ chance, Potter." The lump seemed to have expanded. It was becoming difficult to talk around it. Horribly, his voice rose a note or three and became brittle. "Tell me. I'll do it. I'll do it all. I'll literally do anything to convince you that the feelings I just confessed to you are real. Stupid, misguided and obviously unwelcome, but very, very real. Please." With that he had run out of words to say.

He closed his hands to fists until the nails bit into his palms to keep from reaching out to him. Like a drowning man wanted to breathe he suddenly wanted to touch him. He constantly wanted to do that, ever since Potter had lodged himself inside of his chest the way he had, but for some reason this urge had chosen this very moment to abruptly triple in strength.

Potter took the bunch of papers under his arm and stepped close to him until they were face to face. Just like the last time, Draco could smell coffee on his breath again and couldn't help but wonder whether his mouth would taste like coffee if they-

"Stay the fuck away from me and out of my life."

Potter had drawn his wand and poked him in the ribs. He might as well have drawn a knife and plunged it into his stomach.

"We'll go upstairs to sign your confession now and get the paperwork done. And if I never see you again, it'll be too soon."

Without another word they went to the process department.

There, Potter had a short but friendly chat with a stocky witch – apparently the only person still on duty – whom he called Missus Braithwaite although she insisted, with a snaggle-toothed, lipsticky grin, he call her Gabby, "laik aye told yoo, sugarbritches!" Draco wondered if Gabby could see how forced his smile was, if she noticed the slope of his shoulders that indicated fatigue, or the way he glanced at the clock on the wall behind her over and over.

He was quite sure that she did not. He wished he hadn't.

Five minutes of one-sided, graceless flirting later, Potter left. Draco knew that Potter didn't look back as he walked through the door, so he didn't watch him leave either.

The next hour he signed papers, supplied personal information, and pretended to listen to Gabby as she read him his rights or something of the sort.

His heart had never felt so grey and tired.

/

/

After coming home, Harry smoked two cigarettes, one of them while lying in the bathtub even though it went soggy and gross. He called a pizza place and ordered a pizza, but when the guy came around he found that he didn't have enough Muggle money in the house to pay for it. So he made himself a tuna sandwich with tuna from a can he had opened four or five days ago. It smelled a bit off. He chewed and swallowed mechanically as he sat down in front of the television and tuned in to a rerun of Blackadder.

Eventually he got up, fetched a hammer from the toolbox under the sink, took his old laptop – the one with cyber-traces of Justin still all over it – and started beating it to pieces. He hacked and bashed furiously with his mouth torn wide open although no sound came out. Bits of plastic and metal rained onto and skidded over the kitchen floor while the laugh track from the telly blared in the background. The cracking, splintering sounds were satisfying.

It was three in the morning before Harry finally went to bed. Lying there, he felt good at first but the later the hour got, the more it seemed that he had battered himself and not the computer with that hammer. Especially his head and his chest seemed thrashed.

He cradled his skull with his hands and arms and breathed in and out. In and out. Until sleep finally overcame him.

In his dreams, he was in a small, badly lit room. He was there with another man – Justin. Justin, he was sure. Maybe to say goodbye for the last time. He had such soft blond hair. Justin held on to him desperately like to a lifeline and Harry pressed his face into the curve of his neck, lost in the idea of how a strong embrace would feel like.

Justin told him that he had 'kind of wanted to see' him.

When he woke up, he remembered the things they had done on a big table.

_I am not like you._

He went to the bathroom and threw up the tuna sandwich.

/

/**TBC** (tomorrow)


	7. Chapter 7

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: We jumped in time again.

_Thank you, Carol! So was I, occasionally, while writing it._

/

**-/Chapter 7/-**

"Did someone tell you lately that you look like shit, Mr Malfoy?"

Zabini handed him a bottle of beer and slumped down in the seat next to him.

"Yes, in fact, just about five, maybe six minutes ago, a ghoul lurched by and whispered it into my ear. I told him to let it rest and maybe have a look at himself for a change." The retort came out a bit sharper than he had intended, but Zabini didn't mind. Pansy who was sitting across the table didn't even bother to look up from her iPhone.

"Come on, though. Out with it. The long face isn't just about the Ministry business, is it?"

"Screw the Ministry and every single Ministry minion," he merely answered and looked out the window. It was rainy, dark and cold. Not like August should be, but it suited his mood.

His court date was three weeks ago by now. He had only got his wand back last Tuesday because of bureaucracy. They had put a trace on it that he hoped would wear off somewhere around Christmas because the fee he had paid to get it back from confiscation in the first place, the legal charges, and finally the hospital expenses for his four 'victims' the judge had made him reimburse had been so expensive that he couldn't presently afford someone to take it off for him. He could count himself lucky that the Minstry cleaners had got all his stuff from Preston's flat and resold them to him from the evidence room for a knut and a gleeful smile. It was even more lucky that his memory spells had been good and thorough in the first place, clean modification instead of messy destruction, or the fines would have been considerably higher. Preston, his mum and his friends would forever associate Drake Malcolm with an unfaithful arsehole that Preston had broken up with, and good on him. Everybody could be happy.

The double whammy made of legal fees and the cost of finding a new place to stay had left him – well, not exactly destitute but he had planned to spend that money differently. Even the beer in his hand had been bought by the ghoul next to him.

What was more, though, was the unbearable cheerlessness that hung over him like a fog made of lead. Ever since that night he hadn't been able to hold a single positive thought in his head without having it fall to ashes immediately.

He had never thought that life could be so unappealing.

Now, weeks later, he was beginning to dread that this would be the normal state of his existence for months, maybe even years to come, in spite of the fact that he was already sick and tired of being sick and tired. He was tired of hearing the interrogation room conversation on loop in his mind, of reliving it in his sleep – sometimes with painful alternate endings – and of having his smart-ass brain point out all of his mistakes and all the stupid things he had said. All of them. Over and over.

But he couldn't escape his own head.

"Dray darling, what's the matter?" Pansy glanced over the rim of her iPhone and then back at the screen. "All that wistful sighing and the frowny face. Boyfriend troubles?"

_I wished_, he almost answered.

"Huh?" he uttered instead, doing his best to act as if he truly had no idea why she would say something like that, or as if he hadn't properly heard what she had said at all.

His sexuality was not a topic that had ever come up among his friends. Despite his readiness to give the secret up and shout it out for all the world to hear for Potter's benefit, he had rather enjoyed the fact that his circle wasn't in the know. Not really, at least. Only hazily, after that stag night so they wouldn't ever really question the absence of a girlfriend.

And since none of them were people to whom he would ever consider truly opening up, he had told none of them about Preston, either. They knew he had been living amongst the Muggles somewhere – which only made sense since he was also mostly working with them – but none of them had ever been over at his and Preston's place. So of course, logically, none of them should be aware of the break-up.

Or the heartache.

He frowned inwardly and asked himself since when Pansy had known. Maybe since Greg's stag night, although she had never given any indication that she remembered or had taken him seriously. Maybe even before that, because girls had that intuition. Maybe even since their encounter at Hogwarts in fifth grade.

Because she knew. That innocent, blasé, uninvolved manner was nothing but a front behind which she was hiding her full-on certainty. Not to mention her burning curiosity and mad craving for more details. He had known her since before Hogwarts, after all. She had her intuition, he had years worth of close-up memories.

"Come on, now, Malfoy. We know what's going on." Zabini threw him something that he probably thought was a meaningful look.

"And that from a guy who didn't know that the Falcons won the cup this season," Draco replied without real heat. Not even fighting with Zabini held any true appeal. "A guy _who_ _was at the game_. As a spectator. In the front row. Are you sure you're able to, at any given time, say with any confidence what planet you're on?"

Zabini rolled his eyes and tsked. "It was a really boring game and I had a rough day – I was just really tired, alright? Will I ever hear the end of that?"

"You won't if you don't stop nagging me for no reason," he warned, then wiped his forehead with the heel of his palm. "Look, I'm just in a bad mood, okay? It's really none of your business. I came here tonight to have a beer or two and listen to your inane bickering for three, four hours, and then go home. So let me just do that, will you?"

Pansy and Blaise exchanged an annoyed, pointed look but didn't say another word until Goyle rejoined them at the table after his evening firechat with his wife, oblivious to the conversation that had just taken place and the tension in the air. As always, he brought exciting news about how their little daughter Gracie had finger-painted the walls with Nutella, made the neighbour's cat do a barrel roll in mid-air, tried to flush a slipper down the toilet, or spewed dinner all over her mum when she had taken her into her arms and massaged her little back to make her burp.

Goyle's "dadventures" actually managed to make him smile for a second. They didn't distract him for long though and soon he was back to looking out of the window without really seeing anything, wondering why Potter couldn't have just been _compassionate_ to him the way he had been to Preston.

Then again, to try and eradicate Potter from his memory was probably akin to exterminating just about every recollection he had ever had. Banning Potter from his existence was like banning water from a jellyfish.

That evening, while he was sitting and half-heartedly listening to the trite conversation going on around him, he made a silent vow to himself. Until July 5th next year – his 27th birthday – he wouldn't do anything about the Potter situation. He would let it rest. He would move away from London, get another job with the Muggles, just stay away from everything Potter. He would try and resume life. There was simply no alternative choice. Potter would surely never cross his path again.

And come July, he would let go of it. Of him. Once and for all. Move on with his heart. Get really drunk on his birthday party and possibly find himself a new boyfriend, commit to him, whoever he was. Let the past get old and small in his head.

This time, the lightness that accompanied decision-making was a long time coming and then it was so faint that it almost wasn't there at all.

/

/

"Alice asked about you again today," Hermione informed him. She tried so hard to be nonchalant about inserting it onto the conversation that she failed.

Harry focussed intently on putting the spoon and its contents into (rather than around) Rose's little mouth. The little girl didn't look too excited about that.

"Mmh," he made without clarifying if he was communicating with Rose or with Hermione.

"Harry, I really think you should give her a chance." Close to pleading now.

"Thanks, Hermione," he answered curtly, hoping against reason that she would give it a rest with that.

The pause lasted all of six seconds.

"She's a sweet girl, you know?" When he didn't react, she added, "A really good person."

_If you like her so much, why don't _you_ go hook up with her?_ He collected the bright orange baby mash that Rose had managed to distribute liberally all over her face with the spoon and tried again. Rose grimaced and worked the gruel out of her mouth over again with her tiny tongue, restarting the process. He chuckled tiredly and tried one more time.

"We're worried about you, Harry."

With 'we', she meant herself, and Ron – although to a much, much lesser degree, -, and Rose – even though she had never had the chance to actually have a voice in the matter, also because she was barely a year old. Hermione had taken to almost exclusively talking in the royal plural form whenever she started with this topic. Perhaps she assumed that he would listen better and take advise more easily if it seemed to come from a small crowd.

"Don't be," he said.

"I mean it," she sighed.

"I know," he said. "So do I."

"Harry, please. We think you work too much, and you live too little."

The sincerity of her concern did nothing to diminish his annoyance with it on this occasion. He had been grateful for it the first, second and third time she had given him her opinion disguised as concerned advice in regards to his professional-personal life ratio.

The fourth, fifth and sixth time she had mentioned it had been alright as well. Even though the sixth time had taken place when he had seriously been in a hurry.

He had stopped counting somewhere around ten. It was getting old, even though she worked hard to reword it every time.

This was the fourth time she mentioned Alice, an apprentice in Communications and Correspondence that Hermione had been working with since January. He had met her briefly once but didn't think he would recognize her if they should ever meet coincidentally on the street. Brownish hair, roundish face, regular(ish) figure was all he thought he remembered.

"I know that, too, Hermione. But I like it the way it is."

"And that's what I don't believe." She stopped chopping the salad in front of her and looked at him. Despite the fact that his back was firmly to her, he knew she was watching him. He could practically feel her eyes on the back of his head, her gaze prodding his skull.

"I know for a fact that you're at the Ministry from seven to midnight, sometimes longer. You even go there on weekends. You don't sleep or eat enough. You never take days off. Do you even speak with people outside of work at all? Do you ever... just go out? Have fun? Meet someone? I bet you don't."

He came very close to telling her how he had gone out and met someone just yesterday. They even had a conversation. She had asked 'D'you want fries with that?' and he had answered 'No, thanks'.

"Hermione, please. Stop worrying about me." _I'm not pubertal, you're not my mum, my life isn't yours to fret over._

_And I am not like you._ A loud pang of headache shot through his temples and he rubbed his eyes to make it go away.

"You're not going out and having fun, either." Weak, but he went there anyway.

"That's because I'm married and have a baby to take care of." After a pause, she added, "Not to mention Rose."

He didn't reply, although 'I was married once, too, and my wife almost had a child even if it wasn't mine' lingered on his tongue. Hermione huffed and brought the knife down on the cutting board once more. Judging by the pervasive smell wafting over to him she had moved on to the onions.

"Tell me, Harry, are you afraid to meet someone new?" she asked tentatively between two chops.

"No, I'm not," he sighed, exasperatedly rolling his eyes.

"Good, because I invited Alice over. She'll be here in five minutes."

Harry almost dropped the spoon. He turned around. "You're not serious."

Hermione looked back at him, the challenge in her eyes massively emphasized by the big sharp knife in her hand which was pointing into his direction.

"Hermione, why- I don't want to be paired up with anyone right now. Why are you doing this?" _To me?_

"Who said anything about pairing up? She's just a guest. For dinner." She shrugged. "This is my place and I can invite whomever I want. All I ask of you is to be polite. Hey, where are you going?"

"This is not okay, Hermione. You _know_ I don't want that woman's company, especially not if you told her she'd meet me here to bait her. She's a bloody fangirl and I just don't have time-"

He opened the door forcefully and there she stood.

Actually, her hair was dark blond, her face heart-shaped and she was really rather thin and small – Harry wasn't the tallest to begin with, but she barely reached up to his eyes. Everything about her was slim and elfin, almost anorexic. Especially her fingers, clamped around a Hufflepuff-coloured handbag which she was holding in front of her chest like a tiny, useless shield, looked very fragile to him. So dainty, incapable of strength. _Like a little bird._

She looked at him with an expression that hadn't decided yet if it should be shocked, abashed, tearful or plain confused, testimony to the fact that doors and walls were way too thin in these type of flats. "Uhm," she said and blinked on the verge of tears.

"Hello," he greeted her stupidly, still looking at her fingers and mentally kicking himself repeatedly where it hurt a lot. "You must be Alice. Hermione's right in the kitchen. Just follow the smell, she's cutting up some salad and opinions. _Onions_. Cutting... onions- I was just, uh, leaving. Yeah."

He slid by her and almost dove down the stairs headfirst before apparating home from behind the back door. Or rather, he tried to apparate home and ended up in a hedgerow in a small park a street over from his house instead.

His steps crunched on the wet gravel of the pathway that led through the little park. Walking to his house with his hands in his armpits against the chill and the drizzling English rain, he made a mental note to contact Ron as soon as possible, to prepare him for what he was going to come home to in half an hour or so.

The walk was short but the weather and his already dark mood made it seem long. His hair was dripping and his glasses were beady with rain when he climbed the steps up to his front door. With cramped fingers he missed the keyhole and added some new scratches to the lock with the tip of the key.

_If someone were home, he'd think I was a burglar._

He dropped the keys, cussed and tried again. All the way he pretended with all his might that there wasn't a scenario in his head of him coming home, having the door opened for him from the inside and being greeted warmly, with a smile, a firm embrace. A kiss, equally firm.

The house was hollow. Crossing the kitchen without having switched the lights on, Harry still half expected to step on a piece of laptop shrapnel. Which was impossible since he had cleaned it all up very carefully, both manually and magically. Yet it was still on his mind. Pieces of dreams and illicit, pointless desires were all over this kitchen, waiting to be stepped on, lying in ambush to give him pain.

Just last night, he had had a dream involving the kitchen counter.

He hastily flicked on the lights. The counter gleamed at him, clean and empty, just like the floor. No bits of laptops.

_No naked men, either._

Five minutes later he was standing on Hermione's doormat. He knocked and she opened, looked at him as he looked back and both of them didn't need to say a word. He could hear Alice chatting with Ron in the sitting room. Hermione let him in with a sigh and a joyless smile that spoke of disappointment. And of expectations.

He gritted his teeth against the urge to run and put a smile on his face.

/

/

"I have one last question, Mr Munro."

Draco tried his hardest not to frown openly at the man on the other side of the desk. This talk had taken more than twice as long as he had hoped already. They had talked about the weather, football, cars, and eventually a little about their respective workplaces. All the formalities were clear, the deal was literally two signatures and one stamp away from being done. This conversation was the longest that Draco had had in the past, oh, ten months or so, with anyone. Mr Williams was well on the way of knowing him better than several of his childhood friends. What else could there be to ask?

Still, there was this question, asked just as he closed the door to his office behind him. The man, very tall and wide but with clear indications of having lost quite a lot of weight already – Draco noted how his clothes were at least one, maybe two sizes too big and his belt wasn't in the most worn-out hole any more – was still wheezing a little from climbing the stairs when he went to sit down in his office chair.

As he sat down and gestured Draco to do the same, Draco saw him switch off his mobile phone and disable the speaker-function on the desk telephone which he then also unplugged.

Then, that sentence. "I hope you don't take this personally."

Draco sighed inwardly, summoned a mild smile to his face and responded, "Please, feel free to ask any number of questions, Mr Williams. The company I represent values transparency and honesty to the partners in all areas." _Well, all areas the partners know of, anyway._

Curiously, Mr Williams' forehead wrinkled as if in concentration. He laid his hands on the desk in front of him and weaved his thick fingers together.

"To be all honest with you, this question would be of a more... personal nature."

The soles of his feet suddenly started to itch. _Oh, so he guessed that I'm queer? Whoop-de-doo._ A voice in the back of his head piped up, _When he came into the room after you, did he _lock_ the door?_

"I'm... I'm not certain what you mean by that." He frowned. Mostly at that last voice in his head. "A question concerning me? Personally, privately?"

"Uh, yes." Mr Williams looked down on his hands and back up at him. "I really hope that this question will not cause offence. I am not entirely sure if it's considered proper to ask or... remark on it at all."

_That means you're very well-dressed and groomed. Take it as a compliment. _

_And whatever happens, remember, you're closer to the door. Not to mention much, much faster. _

He willed himself to ignore that stupid thought.

"Well, unless you go ahead and ask, I'm afraid I won't be able to tell, or answer your question," Draco said with a shrug and a nonchalant quip that he didn't feel. In his seven months on this job, he would never have expected to have his sexual orientation in the spotlight like this. It didn't feel good. Indeed it made him a little queasy. _Please, not in this __world as well. _

_Why would anyone remark about it at all? It's not like I'm flaunting it. It's my own business, no one else's._

"You have to understand, I consider something like this also very relevant to business," Mr Williams contradicted his unspoken thoughts in a strange, nervous manner, fidgeting in his seat and enunciating every word with great caution, "and the way that we interact with one another, now and in the future. After all, we are going to be the- the joint links in the chain that ties this company and yours together for some time to come and I would like things to be clear from the get-go."

Draco fought down the urge to smooth down his hair or straighten his tie again. _Chin up_, he said to himself. _Represent your __people proudly. _"Please, Mr Williams, out with it."

Williams heaved a mighty breath, held it in for a second as if he were fighting against a hiccough.

And then suddenly but carefully asked, "Mr Munro, you're one of the... of the magic folk, aren't you?"

/

/**TBC** (tomorrow)

_This cliffhanger was brought to you by Nia._


	8. Chapter 8

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: You might start to hate me and this story from here on in.

_Thanks to Fireaquila and Petrichor-3 for your reviews. _

/

**-/Chapter 8/-**

Draco simply stared, slightly open-mouthed.

Mr Williams saw and immediately raised his hands in a helpless, defensive gesture, halfway up from his seat as if ready to lunge from it and at him like a wrestler from a ring post. To pin him down and keep him from running away, possibly. "I'm sorry, I- I apologise. I- it wasn't meant like an offence at all, I just wondered-"

"Wh- I... How," Draco began but collected himself in a hurry. _NOT what I expected._ "What do you mean, exactly?"

"Well, m- magic folk. Witches and, and wizards. Like, with magic wands and... things," he finished with his voice rising at the end as if it were more of a question than a statement.

"You mean magicians? Like David Copperfield or Siegfried and Roy?" Draco ventured, suddenly aware of the fact that he was toeing legal limits with every word.

"No!" Williams exclaimed and hastily conceded, "I mean, I wouldn't know if David Copperfield is also one of you. I mean, a real wizard. And I don't think Siegfried and Roy can do proper magic. If they-if they could, they wouldn't have got themselves mauled by their tigers. I think. Unless they're just really lousy wizards. Are there lousy wizards?"

Draco just looked at his opposite and let him talk, mostly because he wasn't sure what he was allowed to say. If Mr Williams here happened to be completely in the know already, there shouldn't be a problem.

But it was always better to be safe than sorry around Muggles.

"After all, your fo- the, uhm, magic folk have magic hospitals and everything, and they could've cured them, surely, no?"

He looked up nervously but got no answer from Draco, so he just went on.

"A-And anyway, if they were real wizards, they wouldn't need the flashy outfits and the- the curtains and the pyrotechnics, would they? I mean, the real magic folk doesn't need all that. Real magic doesn't come with sparks, usually, I think. Not that I'm an expert, mind you."

"Mr Williams, what exactly is your... your point?" Draco finally inquired carefully to stop the ranting.

"The point is, Mr Munro, that I... if you were, as I... assumed... uhm, a wizard... that I would like to superimpose some amendments onto the contract. To, uhm, ensure the safety of the company and protect it against, uhm, manipulation. Magical... manipulation." As Draco breathed in to respond, he quickly added, "Not that I would think you generally inclined to fraudulent behaviour, but, you see – I just cannot risk this company to become the plaything of a wizard's firm, it's too dear to me. And I mean, it's always better to be safe than sorry, isn't it?"

Hearing this, Draco couldn't help but smile inwardly. In some respects, Muggles and wizards were really very alike. So careful and unsure.

He looked at Mr Williams, a massive ball of nerves in his chair that he, according to his sources, had only just acquired two weeks ago when his predecessor had been fired from the company due to accusations of fraud. He had shut down his mobile phone and the speaker to create a safe environment in which this conversation, which clearly unnerved him mightily, could be had.

The guy was just doing his job as best he could. He deserved some credit for that.

And he apparently was an insider already anyway.

Draco sighed deeply and finally asked, "Whatever gave me away?"

Williams beamed at him, five years younger with relief when he realized that he hadn't made a complete arse out of himself. "Oh, nothing feasible, really. It's just... you've got that air. That... what do they call it? Awe. Ore. Aura. Aura, that's it," he triumphed and pointed a thick finger at him.

"And there's always this feeling, like your folk are seeing something that we don't. The way that you look around you, just. Other people might say that you're just a bit funny, you know, like you see something that's not there. But I know that something is actually there and _we_ just can't see it. You only really notice when you know what you're looking for, though."

Draco nodded and 'hmm'ed. He didn't exactly have a way with words, but what he said was a spot-on observation about Muggles. He seemed very eager to share, so he didn't stop him as he continued.

"You see, my cousin is one of you folks. We grew up together at my parents', and he started to be... you know, funny like that, when he was ten or so. He was already a bit weird before that, to be honest, you know, crazy stuff happened around him. They took him away to a special school and after that he only ever showed up again in the summer. And every time he did, after he came back from his school, he was weirder than before. Until one day, those things that my folk cannot see attacked me."

Draco lifted his eyebrows and Williams nodded emphatically at the implied question.

"Yes, they really did. Sucked the life out of me, like, all the warmth. I thought I would die, it was terrible. So dark and cold, like ice, pitch-black, like deep underwater. And nothing but bad, bleak thoughts. Terrifying, really. It still gives me nightmares to this day. I cannot remember what happened after that but my cousin must've fought them off with... with magic, like. You see, he was there with me at the time, and mum told me he'd carried me home, after."

"Weird cousins and life-sucking monsters. Sounds like your run-ins with magic weren't too positive," Draco remarked, slightly worried about the image this future cooperator had of magic and wizardkind. And also about the fact that he had had an encounter with a Dementor. That wasn't exactly supposed to happen, ever.

"Yeah, not really," he chuckled. "That wasn't how it started, though. First thing that happened is, I got a pig tail that had to be surgically removed. Then I ate a candy that made my tongue swell up, like, gigantic." He demonstrated with his hands.

"Weasleys Ton-Tongue Toffee," Draco mumbled when he saw. That candy had the Weasley signature all over it.

"Then the thing with my aunt – my cousin blew her up, like a balloon. She almost floated away to the moon. Well, at least up to the ceiling." He again demonstrated with his hands. "Boy, in retrospect, she was a bloody hag. She might've deserved it. Harry should've been right to blow her right out of the atmosphere. She had a cane and this evil beast of a dog that-"

Draco almost choked on his own breath. His head was full of clicks. _Living with his dreadful aunt and uncle. Mean cousin. Almost expelled from Hogwarts because of use of magic to fend off Dementors in front of Muggles._ He knew this story. Not from this angle, but he knew it. All too well. Almost everyone in the Wizarding world knew it.

"Ex- excuse me, what's your cousin's name exactly?" His heart was suddenly in his throat and his throat was dry. _This cannot be happening._

July 5th was only nineteen days away.

"My cousin's name? Harry Potter," his opposite said, completely unaware. "Why do you ask?"

/

/

Draco didn't exactly mind that the talk grew long and longer still, suddenly. Indeed, he felt he was glued to the seat.

Dudley – that's what he was supposed to call him from now on, _enough with the 'Mr Williams' crap, that's my father-in-law's name anyway and every time someone says it I'm scared that he's standing right behind me!_ – basically related his entire life story, visibly glad that, for once, he didn't have to leave out or talk around the bits that had to do with magic. If Draco had a knut for every time Dudley said 'I normally never mention this' or 'I've never told that to anyone, not even my wife', he would've been a sickle or two richer.

"Unintentional, you say?"

"Yes," Draco explained patiently, "it happens to most children with magic. It gets... activated rather abruptly, mostly in life-threatening situations-"

"Like an air bag?"

"Uhm, it's... well, yeah, like an air bag, if you will. But it also happens when the emotions are high, for example when the child is very sad or very angry."

"So... the vanishing glass was basically my fault because I made, uhm, fun of him before?" Dudley seemed genuinely sorry for what his eleven year-old self had done.

"Hard to tell, actually. Potter has a... special affinity to snakes," he said, recollecting the incident during their duel in second year and the sibilant noises that had come out of his mouth, scaring everybody into believing that he was the heir of Slytherin and the one who had opened the Chamber of Secrets. "Maybe that also played into it."

"Oh, so you know Harry personally?" He looked surprised which in turn surprised Draco, until he understood that Dudley had no idea about Potter's status in the wizarding world. He only knew him as the weird cousin he grew up with and had no clue that he was a celebrity. It figured that Potter had never told him. Never told him about the accidental magic, either. Never told him anything at all.

"Well, yes. You see, Harry Potter is... quite famous. Really, really famous. Think David Beckham, only more important." His opposite seemed startled and awed by the thought. "But apart from that, I went to school with him. We were in the same year for six years."

"Oh, you're schoolmates! That's a surprise, then, for us to be meeting! It's like destiny, eh?"

"Yeah." Draco smiled back but didn't manage to hold the smile for long. "Yeah, it is. Just like that."

The conversation flagged, so Dudley moved back to the paperwork part, since he was evidently unsure of how to speak about his newly-turned-superstar cousin, and with someone who knew him better than he himself did at that.

They revised the contract as he had said he wanted to do for the good of the firm and got the last questions – about the Muggle-wizard ratio in the company, the wizards' position and influence, magical means of coercion and manipulation, and affiliation to other companies in the realms of magic – cleared up.

As Dudley reread the revised draft and his voice droned on and on about shareholding, sub-subparagraphs and justified interest, Draco's mind wandered off towards the topic that had been like a taboo to him for the past two hundred and fifty-seven days and touched upon it tentatively.

True to his promise to himself, he had tried to let Harry Potter fade from his life. He had avoided to think and to read about him, refused to talk about him or listen to anyone talk about him. He had developed strategies to evade the man and everything to do with him and to distract and scatter his thoughts whenever the topic came up. He had gone to parties and occasionally talked to and smiled at tall, blond men. He had made such an effort.

To recall him now was to recall a sad song from the past. He still knew all the lyrics, the melody, the trills, cadences and unexpected pauses and stresses were still familiar even though he hadn't heard them in a while. He recalled the crushing gravity of the sadness but the feeling was old and didn't fit him any more.

He looked back on the Draco Malfoy of several months ago and frowned.

Was it really like him to pull back to the point of hiding? Was it like him to give up on everything after the first try? Was it right to leave such a lousy last impression and let it stand?

Wasn't it a poor testimony to the nature and sheer magnitude of his feelings to be acting the way he was?

_Merlin and Mordred, Draco. What are you doing?_

He decided that he was being weak and inconsequent which would appear as phony in Potter's eyes. He was running away again and in denial – something he had already disavowed once, years ago, when he had gone and embraced the fact that he couldn't live with a woman and be truly happy or make her so. But here he was again, not lending credence to what was true on the inside.

_And more importantly, what have you done?_

_I basically rubbed my feelings into his face and demanded a positive reaction from him. At his workplace, in front of his colleagues, after he had a very long day. After the scene I made and what I did to Preston. After what I said about his wife. After being a little shit to him for seven years of Hogwarts. I just barged into his life without paying any attention to _him_. _

"I'm such an idiot," it slipped out of his mouth. It was loud enough to interrupt Dudley who didn't catch the words however.

"Pardon?" he blinked at him over the rim of his reading glasses.

"Sorry," Draco replied hastily. "Sorry, carry on."

Dudley blinked again and continued to read with a cough. While he skipped over the previous lines to pick up the thread he had lost and mumbled individual words he read – liability... remain reserved... mutuality... -, Draco came to a decision. Or rather, the decision came to him, more easily than any previous one. It was logical. It felt light and easy in his chest. It was also, possibly, destiny.

"Say, Dudley, are you still in contact with your cousin?"

/

/

"You're not eating," Alice observed.

She always observed things. Very observant character in general, her. She had spent the last ten minutes pointing out people who were sitting around them and commenting on their odd little behaviours. Without fail she found something that made her think of someone she knew or something that had happened to someone that was somehow interesting enough to be divulged. All she required was the occasional _hmm_ and _aha?_ and _oh..._ and she could keep going for ages.

It was odd that, on the one hand, she was so quirky, pleasant, interesting and engaging. She was obviously an amazing person. On the other hand, Harry wanted to be somewhere else. Without her.

"Neither are you," he remarked and took a sip of his mercilessly overpriced sparkling water that made him want to burp.

Ron always talked about Hermione and Rose when at work. Every five minutes or so his thoughts would drift off to his family. Harry would listen to him wondering out loud if they were doing what Hermione had said they would be doing that morning, or if he should go to the shop after knocking-off time and get some more nappies or baby food or such. He would spontaneously tell him something that had happened recently, something that had amazed him about his child, like a new word, a tooth, or a reaction previously unseen. In Ron's family, things happened. Ron pondered on them ceaselessly, and his enthusiasm to do so never waned. Rose's fascination with dogs. The idea that they could get a dog. Hermione's staunch resistance against the idea of ever getting a dog. Her blooming obsession with tinctures that might help her rid herself of her tiger stripes. Ron's blooming obsession with Hermione's kick-ass tiger stripes. That time they had gone to the zoo and Rose had looked at the tiger in open-mouthed fascination. Ron's epiphany about getting a cat instead. Hermione's cold-hearted shooting down of that idea as well. And on and on.

In contrast, Harry found that something or somebody always had to remind him of Alice. He never asked himself where she was and what she was doing. He could never start talking – or even thinking – about her spontaneously.

The one thing he did think about spontaneously was a conversation he pretended had never taken place.

"Would you like me more if I ate like a horse?" she asked and stabbed at a leaf of salad with her fork.

They'd had this discussion three times already, always in variations. For some reason they always ended up talking about each other's eating habits. Soon they would be discussing Harry's sleeping habits. Like Hermione, Alice had taken to check his Ministry work records so she knew when he started and finished work. As a firm defender of nine hours of sleep, his nightly five-hours-max of rest were unacceptable to her as a person.

Unlike him, she was always very concerned about what he was doing. How he was feeling. That he was feeling good and sitting comfortably.

After that, she'd suss out his social interactions. Or lack thereof. It was like they were stuck in a film script, acting out the same scene over and over on different locations. Harry sighed and looked out of the window, as if the correct thing to say – the magic spell needed to break them out of this loop – was out there.

The other thing he kept thinking about randomly was a confession he hadn't heard.

There was a woman sitting somewhere behind him. She was talking very loudly on her phone, saying "I mean, that mouth of his, oh emm gee, think Tom Hardy's lips with the Chris Hemsworth smile. I tell you, if he could just so much as look into my direction every once in a while, I would-"

_In a heartbeat._

He coughed and frowned to himself.

_I'm talking about feelings. I want- you to stay the fuck away from me and out of my life._

Just now, all he wanted was for this to stop.

"I'm just saying... Eating nothing but rabbit food can't be healthy." He had already vaguely lost track of the 'conversation' and just hoped that it fit with what had been said before.

Alice always wanted to talk 'relationship'. They always ended up talking food, sleep and interpersonal dealings instead, but the topic never really rested for her. It was the zombie of conversation topics. _I like you. Tell me, do you like me? Do you? How much? Well, do you? Do you?_

Harry reckoned that discussion about their relationship was moot. This was the fourth time he'd had dinner with her – third time if one didn't count that very first dinner in Hermione and Ron's kitchen which had been painfully awkward and was one of the experiences in his life Harry wanted most urgently to forget – and they had held hands once. Accidentally. And she had kissed him on the cheek and then switched over and also kissed him on the mouth before he could react. That was all they had in terms of relationship. It wasn't much and certainly not enough to talk about it.

He wondered again why he was going out with her, and why he always ended up watching her as she nibbled her way through her salad. All the while her foot kept nudging his left calf.

He moved his leg out of the way. If she was disappointed about it, she didn't let show.

"Says the guy who sleeps four hours and then goes to work for four times that."

Harry sighed and sipped the water again.

"Harry, do I remind you of Ginny?"

He held the gulp of water in his mouth until it felt warm and his tongue started to go all numb and prickly. Then he swallowed and answered "Not particularly." He hadn't even thought about it before. He imagined that he was supposed to search for parallels and discrepancies between the two of them because that's what men did, didn't they? They compared the new girlfriend to the ex-girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend to the girlfriend before that, and the first girlfriend to the first crush, and all of them to their mum.

He didn't. _I am not like you._

What was wrong with Alice? Why did she not click with him despite being such a great person? Why wasn't she the new girlfriend destined to be compared to Ginny?

"I mean, I'm kind of... built like her. Generally. Almost same height, same... same clothes size. Same cup size."

Maybe it was because of Ginny. Because she wasn't so much an ex-girlfriend as an ex-wife. It had been a long time since he had registered her with 'affectionate relationships'.

"Same eye colour, too," Alice went on. "We both have freckles. Well, at least in the summer." She picked through the salad and skewered a kidney bean without actually looking because she was looking at him in her observant way. "Do you like me at all, Harry?"

_Stay the fuck away from me and out of my life._

The question wasn't 'What was wrong with Alice?' Alice wasn't the wrong one.

Harry looked at his hands strangling the tall glass of water and wished he knew how to set himself right – at least right enough to give an answer to that question without choking on it.

As it were, they finished their salad and water without another word.

A waiter came by to drop the bill. Atypically, she was a woman built like a boxer, or a wardrobe. She was very tall and her shoulders were wide. When she collected Alice's plates, her hands made them look small.

As they were leaving the restaurant and Harry was turning his collar up against the wind and the rain, Alice hooker her arm into his and clung to him as if for shelter. Even through layers of coats and clothing, he thought he could feel her soft breast pressing against his upper arm. They walked several minutes to the dark corner from where they could apparate home.

Shortly before they did, Alice leaned in and asked "Do you like burly women? Like the waiter?" There was a hint of amusement in her voice that Harry found unbearable.

She held on so tightly that he was losing circulation in his arm.

He wanted to turn to her and yell 'Look, I'm just trying to make this work, alright?!' into her face. There were many things he wanted to do but didn't these days, he found. Conversely, there was many a thing he didn't want to do but ended up doing anyway.

/

/

Two hours later, Harry was leaning out his open kitchen window. The air was so cold that he was twitching and felt like his bone marrow was freezing stiff. His night shirt and shorts were no match against the chill. Especially the two fingers holding his B&H Silver had gone numb.

He heard the front door open and close without much subtlety and Alice's heels clicking away swiftly. He flicked the cigarette butt out of the window – with some effort because his fingers wouldn't let go – closed it and went back to the bedroom.

He changed the sheets and ended up sleeping on the couch anyway, with infomercials running on the telly until morning. The news jingle woke him at seven.

It took two days for Hermione to catch on to what was going on, or rather, what wasn't going on any more. When she asked him about it, he had no other words than "Just didn't work out." She looked at him with a sympathetic expression and said "You know, Harry, one of these days you'll just have to let someone in" as if that meant anything.

A week later, she resumed her sermons about being worried about him and his lack of social interaction.

The second time she caught him to get her preaching in edgeways was when he was babysitting Rose. She was just about to remind him of his exaggerated work ethic when an owl arrived for him. It carried a clean white paper letter with a stamp in the corner. Dudley's handwriting still slanted downwards like it used to.

Harry ripped it open and skimmed the eight lines contained within.

Actually, he had no great wish to have dinner with the Williams' – even though both Melinda and Kevin were really great – and David the unknown apparent former schoolmate whom Harry suspected to be some press minion stupid enough to try to get to him through his cousin. He accepted the invitation nonetheless, even made quite a show of it only to shut up Hermione for the time being.

The letter said that he was invited to bring a 'plus one'. He couldn't help but think how, even if he had got this invitation a week earlier, he wouldn't have taken Alice along. The thought of her sitting at the Williams' table and delicately pushing Melinda's hearty food around the plate with her fork was intolerable.

/

/**TBC** (tomorrow)

_You knew it when he said "My cousin is one of you folks", didn't you? :)  
_


	9. Chapter 9

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: Dinner time.

_Annabel: I'm sorry, I'm resolved to only upload one chapter at a time (except for the last chapter and the epilogue which I will both upload on Thursday). I want a fair chance to communicate with anonymous reviewers such as you. Also, formatting drives me insane and isn't good for my nerves at all* so I'll do one chapter each evening. __Also: Thank you so much for your reviews on my other story as well. That was really unexpected and made me squee :D I'm sorry you lost sleep over it, though!_

*_HEEELP: Is there ANY way at all to put a normal blank line into a document? Or to at least widen the space between two lines (separated by Enter) so that it looks like there is a blank like?  
_

_And more thanks to Fireaquila, Tarff and Carol for reviews - y'all rock! - and to plasticblue for fav'ing!_

/

**-/Chapter 9/-**

/

Draco was glad that he had skipped both breakfast and lunch. If he hadn't he would probably have seen those again by now. His empty stomach was getting ready to dry-heave as the minute hand of the tasteful grandfather clock in the corner crept onwards glacially.

The Williams' house was small and neat and very British. A lot like Melinda, whom he had got to know five minutes ago and who had commanded him to sit tight and wait while she bustled off into the kitchen to apply the finishing touches to the cooking. The smell of roast beef and potatoes wafted through the dining room.

If only he hadn't been substantially more nervous than before his O.W.L.s, he might have enjoyed it.

Potter was six minutes late.

"Honey, d'you need help with the meat?" Dudley came into the room, mobile phone still in hand after taking an urgent call from his boss. The man's dedication to his company was undeniable.

"Not at all," his wife promptly answered from the kitchen.

It probably said a lot about the hierarchy in the house that Dudley nodded to himself and took a seat at the table instead of going to check.

"Such a show-off, eh?" Dudley smirked fondly. "Doesn't get to parade her cooking skills in front of such a large and appreciative audience very often."

Before Draco could reply – something along the lines of 'Are we sure the audience is going to be large this evening? He's _six minutes_ late, are you positive that he'll come at all?' which weighed heavily in his empty stomach – Melinda rushed into the room with a steaming bowl of vegetables in her hands.

"I heard that," she admonished her husband with a mock seriousness while she placed the bowl on the table between the cutlery and crockery that was already laid out. "No dessert for you tonight."

"Aw, honey," Dudley whined in response and looked up at her with puppy eyes.

"That look won't work on me," she wagged her finger at him, looked over at Draco and winked. "At least not from you." With that, she buzzed off into the kitchen again.

Draco tried not to think too much of being flirted with by the seven-months pregnant wife of a man he had only got to know four days ago and in whose dining room he was only sitting because he happened to be someone's cousin. He felt like he was exploiting his kindness and feared that it would all blow up into his face the moment Potter walked in the door.

On the other hand, he feared even more that Potter wouldn't walk in the door at all.

Right that moment the doorbell rang.

Draco's stomach seemed to retract to somewhere, a previously unknown dark, cold corner of his body.

"Ah, that's probably him," Dudley pointed out the obvious as he rose from his chair.

The front door squeaked as it opened. Muffled voices spilled into the dining room from the hall.

Draco would still have recognized Potter's right away, even if he hadn't known.

Dudley greeted him, Potter sounded embarrassed to be late, a little confused to be there but generally grateful. His cousin offered to take his coat, assured him that his tardiness wasn't a big deal since dinner was only just getting ready and inquired about his health and life and job. Potter replied something universally applicable and returned the questions.

Dudley wasted no time to tell him about the merger of the companies and how he had met Mr David Munro who happened to be an old schoolmate and thought to throw them together as a favour on the occasion of his and Melinda's fourth anniversary.

"... had the bigger feast with Melinda's parents and grandparents last week already," Dudley's voice got gradually more distinct, "but I thought it would be nice to have another one, more domestic. Nicky and the twins are staying at Rex and Marie's for the weekend, so there were three empty chairs at the table, so Melinda and I thought we could invite David, and you and your partner..." He trailed off as he stepped into the dining room.

Potter followed behind.

_Without a partner. _

Draco couldn't help but rise from his chair and face him. See him eye to eye as the mild amusement at Dudley's exposition vanished from his face and gave way to thoroughly unpleasant surprise and finally anger. _I deserve that._

"Malfoy," Potter almost growled, letting him know unmistakably that the months between today and their last unfortunate encounter hadn't done much to change his general opinion of him.

"Potter," Draco nodded at him and didn't know what else to say. Or rather, what else to say first. _I'm sorry for- I want- Please, can you- I still- I still... _

"Harry, you remember David from- from school, right?" Dudley had neither caught the different last name, nor registered the exchange of dark looks and the palpable drop in temperature.

"Dudley, this man's name isn't David. It's Draco-"

"Mister Beeeaan!"

An ear-splitting squeal of pure delight came from the doorway. Potter turned around only to be tackled at hip height by a tiny knight.

He was in full armour – with the exception of his feet on which he was wearing bright blue non-slip socks – and armed with a round Captain America shield in and a balloon sword. Draco heard a small 'ouff' form Potter as some part of the hard plastic armour connected with his belly.

"I told you to take that thing off ten minutes ago, Kevin," Melinda remarked as she rushed into the dining room again, this time setting down the potatoes. They steamed and probably smelled delicious but Draco didn't dare to take a whiff. He hardly even breathed. The unresolved tension was wrecking him.

Kevin, true to his barely six year old self, didn't listen at all to his mother.

"Have you brought some more candy beans? Please?" His voice was muffled coming from inside the helmet. "My birthday was five weeks ago!"

Potter had detached himself from the boy's hug and went down on a knee to be face to face with him.

"Who do we have here, pray tell?" He made a show of peering through the visor of the plastic helmet. "Reveal yourself, valiant knight!"

Kevin giggled and rushed to take the helmet off which proved difficult since he didn't take the time to put his plastic sword and shield out of his hands. When he finally managed to squeeze his head out of the helmet, his fine hair was plastered to his skull by static electricity. It was blond and a shade lighter than his mother's. His wide grin revealed two yet missing front teeth. "It's me, uncle Harry!"

"Dear me, it is! Sir Kevin, I didn't recognize you! You were about half as big when I saw you last time." He tousled his hair and looked up at Dudley. "I didn't think he'd remember me. He was only four."

Dudley chuckled. "Oh, I'm afraid he sees, hears and remembers absolutely everything. Especially the beans, as you can see. I mean- toothpaste flavour? Wet dog, asparagus, bogeys? And wallpaper glue? Really?"

Potter shrugged with a smile and got back up on his feet again.

Even though he was halfway across the room, Draco could feel the chill creeping back into Potter's mood as he turned away from the boy and back to him. Potter eyed him coldly while visibly contemplating what he might disclose in order to remove him from this dinner.

Melinda Williams foiled all his plans. Just as Potter was about to open his mouth, she set the last plate onto the table and demanded, in the fashion of a wife and mother fully in control of her flock, "Everyone, sit."

"But mu-um, the beans!" Kevin had been busy trying to wrestle his arm out of the strap of his shield which he now threw down on the floor to emphasize the urgency of the situation.

"Maybe after dinner, darling. Now sit."

Everyone did. The head of the table was reserved for Melinda where she, according to herself, had "an extra-comfortable chair and enough space to manoeuvre the baby bump". Kevin wriggled into the chair at her right, for best possible surveillance. Dudley sat to her left, with Draco already at his side, while Potter took the last available spot next to Kevin. Right in front of Draco.

"Everybody help yourselves. Except you, young man. Don't want you monopolizing the roast again," Melinda ordered while she took Kevin's plate and scooped vegetables onto it, despite his protests and his solemn oaths not to 'momopolize' anything.

Draco did his best not to try and look like he was trying to brush Potter's hand as they reached for the same ladle. Dudley got up and poured water for everyone.

"Do you want to say grace again, Kevin?" Melinda asked and turned to her guests. "He learnt it from his grandparents and then his uncle Tony taught him some witty benedictions. D'you mind?"

"Not at all," Potter assured her.

Draco saw his look darken immediately once those words were out of his mouth and the consequences dawned on him. As it turned out, saying grace with grandpa and grandma involved holding hands around the table.

Kevin insisted and grabbed Potter's hand enthusiastically. His mother took her son's left hand and interwove her other with her husband's fingers once he was done pouring. Dudley's left hand was still cold from the water bottle, Draco noticed as they joint hands. Or maybe it just felt like that because his own skin was hot. Sweaty. He wished he could wipe his yet empty left hand on his trousers once more but that would have been too awkward.

So he reached out. Potter had extended his arm halfway. Skin touched.

Potter held his hand the way he might have held a dead fish.

Kevin had already started with his blessings. "Lord, we know without a doubt you'll bless this food as we pig out." The last bit almost drowned in a fit of mad giggling and snorting.

Draco tried his hardest to smile convincingly and ignore the fact that it almost physically hurt to be touched like this. _I dreamt about this. _Potter's touch was like fire being pumped in through his pores. Not the good kind of fire. _I thought it would be different._

_I wanted this to be so very different._

"Kevin, pull yourself together, people are starving over here," his dad gently admonished as Kevin doubled up with boyish laughter on his chair.

He looked up and met Potter's eyes. They were unreadable. There was the angry crease between his eyebrows again. Draco wondered if he would ever see his face without that.

"Food's getting cold, Kev'," Melinda now reminded him.

Suddenly, Draco caught Potter's gaze as it slipped. Not for very long at all, maybe for half a heartbeat. But it slipped and Draco saw it falling down to his mouth.

Then it flitted away like a frightened bird.

"Father, Son and Holy Ghost," Kevin intoned.

Draco readjusted his grip in one movement. Potter's palm was warm against his. He grasped firmly and tried to press his heart and soul into the other man's skin. For another half of a heartbeat.

"Who eats the fastest, eats the most!"

Potter pulled his hand out of his grip as if he had got an electric shock.

"Amen!" Dudley, Melinda and Kevin said in unison. Potter followed a second later with a mumbled "Amen".

Draco pulled his hand back. It tingled now. Everything tingled, as if he were a bell that had been struck.

"That was a wonderful blessing, Kevin," Potter said. Draco thought his voice sounded a little shaky. "You have to teach me sometime."

Soon everyone's plate was full and they were eating, in varying degrees of the word. Kevin seemed to suck up all the foodstuffs he liked after the fashion of a rampant hoover, eschewing most of the vegetables. Melinda visibly ate for two. Dudley had evidently got into the way of eating slowly, chewing thoroughly and taking sips of water very often. Draco suspected it was part of the diet whose results he had noted in his too-large suit two weeks before.

Potter didn't seem to be eating at all. The pieces he cut from the beef were tiny. He was busy staring darkly at his plate or at an undefined spot in the general vicinity of the vegetable bowl and pointedly not at his opposite.

"So, Harry, what do you do?" Melinda began amicably as she helped cut up Kevin's piece of meat on his plate. "Dudley hasn't told me that much about you at all, and the last time you were over for a visit, I was still at the hospital with the twins."

"Oh, I'm still doing tax consultant work in London," Potter lied without letting it show. "Very boring, really. Busy enough to keep me from visiting people though – sorry for not coming by earlier. I should've introduced myself properly to Nicky, now that she's old enough to maybe remember me. And to Lizzie and Susan, too. Dudley sent me a picture, though, they're lovely. And I should've come to your birthday party, Kev," he told his nephew who seemed only mildly bothered and shrugged, chewing.

"Not the most exemplary grand uncle I am," Potter chided himself as both Dudley and Melinda interrupted him to contradict benevolently.

"And you and David went to school together?"

"Yes, we did. Long ago." Potter's tone was clipped. Maybe it was just his imagination, but Potter was suddenly holding on to his knife very tightly indeed.

"We didn't have the best sort of relationship back then," Draco hurried to say, "mainly because of me being an insufferable and foolish little snob. I've always wanted to, uhm. To make amends."

A strange silence followed this short confession. Potter shot him an angry look through narrowed eyes, then refocussed his attention and sawed at the meat before him.

"David was really very forthcoming about... sorting things out between the two... firms," Dudley informed his cousin between two mouthfuls of potato. "It's a pleasure working with him, frankly, and learning... _things_ from him-" He stretched the word 'things' to such an obvious degree that Draco felt compelled to interject a mindless "It always takes two to tango" to cover it up before Melinda noticed that something was fishy. Which she probably did anyway since she wasn't dimwitted. For now, she didn't remark on it though.

Meanwhile, Potter nodded toward his plate and muttered "Oh, I'm certain" at it with a note of sarcasm that was most likely lost on the others. Draco heard it and felt the sting.

"And that's despite him being so new in the business," Dudley told his wife. "I know I didn't have the whole thing figured out like that after less than a year."

"So you've only been working for Lowman's since-"

"Last August, yeah," Draco confirmed. "I had a job in that line of business before, but last August my life just... capsized. My own fault, mostly. I quit the old job, relocated, tried to start all over again. Turns out it wasn't as clean a break as I had initially intended it to be, but..." He broke off as he saw Potter's fingers twitching around the knife again. "Anyway, starting to work for Lowman's was one of my better ideas," he finished on an upbeat note and took a sip of water, suddenly hoping it were wine or something to calm his unduly jittery nerves.

"Hear, hear," Dudley commented.

"So, what are you doing, if I may ask?" Draco turned the conversation away from himself. "Head chef of the Gordon Ramsay? This roast is really good," he remarked lightly without feeling light, rather desperate to change the topic.

Melinda, as it turned out, was working as a therapist specialized in trauma management. She made it sound like a no-big-deal part-time job – what with the kids, both the ones already born and the one still on the way, housework, and caring for an aunt who had suffered a stroke some time ago and now needed twenty-four-seven support.

However, there was a picture of a handsome, strawberry blond man in a camouflage uniform smiling broadly down from the wall. He was right between all the baby pictures so the resemblance between him and Kevin – the hair, the nose, the grin – was obvious. Draco was almost sorry for having asked but Melinda seemed fine and at peace with her life story. She talked about 'John' without hesitation and finished all her sentences, smiling bravely.

Draco tried not to become jealous when he saw her reaching out for Dudley's hand and receiving a short but warm and reassuring touch in return. Very briefly, he asked himself what would happen if he were to reach across the table again. Another dead fish grasp? A punch in the face? Knife to the jugular? All of the above?

Melinda started talking about her children then, mostly to tell Potter about the two new additions to the family. Susan, she told him, was the more lively of the two while Lizzie was the quiet inspector of the surroundings, although she could scream twice as loud as her sister if the mood took her and also had been several grams heavier and some centimetres taller at birth. They both had inherited hair and eye colour from Dudley. Their maternal grandparents and current chaperones, Rex and Marie, insisted that, while Kevin was all John's boy and Nicky was a good mix of each parent, the twins both generally came after the Dursley side of the family.

"Which is completely fine with me as long as they don't take after Vernon," Dudley declared, throwing Potter a meaningful look and getting one in return.

The conversation strayed towards less personal topics – football, the local fair, and a woman who had won a television singing competition of some sort who was a good friend of someone who knew someone else – when Melinda who had gone rather quiet suddenly lowered her cutlery and pushed her chair back.

"Uhm, I think you'll have to excuse me for a second," she said with a wobbly smile and rose from her seat holding her belly with one hand and covering her mouth with the other.

"Are you alright, love?" Dudley got up along with her, concern in his voice. "Queasy again?"

Melinda just nodded. "Cut me some ginger, please?"

"And a peppermint tea?"

"That'd be lovely," was the last thing that could be heard as she vanished in the halls of her house, probably on the way to the bathroom. Dudley got things ready in the kitchen according to her requirements in next to no time and followed her with a short 'Back in a minute, don't worry, this is normal'.

Leaving Draco alone on the table with Kevin and Potter.

/

/**TBC** _(tomorrow)_


	10. Chapter 10

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: This one is rather short, but a favourite of mine. Damn, that sounds slightly pretentious. Sorry.

_As always, thank you, Carol! And thanks to Prosaicdays for fav'ing!_

_Also: Oh Merlin, the visitor count is now a four-digit number. Even taking into consideration all those who clicked by accident and all the people who have been counted double and triple, that's A LOT of you. I'm so stoked about fact that you're obviously enjoying my story enough to come back! *does a little dance* _

_The cry for help with the blank lines thing is still echoing in the distance, by the way. Maybe someone could tell me that it definitely doesn't work so I can stop trying...  
_

/

**-/Chapter 10/-**

/

Nobody said a word. Draco and his opposite were just sitting there since they had already finished their dinner, both clueless about what they should do, both, incidentally, wishing they had a phone they could fiddle with.

Kevin still had some vegetables on his plate which he was currently arranging according to their diplomatic loyalties. The potatoes were at war with the broccoli, he informed them although neither had asked. The broccoli eventually lost but the battlefield was strewn with fallen soldiers from both camps. The gravy even looked like pools of thin, brown blood.

The grandfather clock ticked away the seconds. A minute. Minute and a half. Two minutes. Two minutes and a half. So much for Dudley's prediction.

"Uncle Harry, can I ask you something?" Kevin pronounced it 'someding'.

Potter sighed. "Is it about the beans again, Kevin?"

Kevin shook his blond head and mh-mhh'ed. "It's about hair."

"Hair?" He raised an eyebrow. "Shoot, then."

"There's a new boy in my class," Kevin began and pushed the broccoli corpses onto a pile. "He's really good at football and he jumps from the three-metre board." Finally, Kevin looked up from his plate gravely. "But he has really long hair, too."

"So?" Potter looked at him quizzically.

"Brad says that a man who has really long hair really wants to be a lady."

Potter uttered a very eloquent "uhm".

"Brad says that only ladies can have long hair," Kevin explained in the gravely serious fashion of a six-year old. "But girls are always really bad at football and they're all really scared of jumping. They don't even jump from the one-metre board, they're all scaredy-pants. But Justin has really long hair, like so, and he jumps from the three-metre board and he can kick very good." Kevin crunched up his face and looked at his uncle, confused.

Potter had suddenly gone somewhat pale except for two spots of red on his cheeks. When he realized that Draco had seen, he turned his head away as far as he could while still looking at Kevin.

"Well," Potter said hesitantly, then cleared his throat. "I think Brad was wrong about, uhm, Justin. Men and women can have short hair or long hair or no hair at all and still be-"

"Is uncle David like Justin, uncle Harry?" Kevin interrupted and turned towards Draco, calling him uncle like he apparently did all the male grown-ups who weren't teachers or his dad or granddad.

Now it was Draco's turn to go "uhm".

"You have long hair," Kevin pointed out.

"That's true," Draco agreed and ran a hand down his ponytail. He hadn't cut it since before last August and it had already been fairly long then as well. It was long enough to bother him, and to be bound in a yet rather stubbly ponytail. "But Pott... uncle Harry is right. I don't want to be a lady. So Brad must be wrong."

The name felt weird in his mouth, like a missing tooth. He would have to practice saying it. Maybe tomorrow, in front of the mirror, where he could also try to find whatever Potter had been looking at there exactly. Maybe he had something in the corner of his mouth? He briefly rubbed both of them with his knuckles.

"Do you want to kiss uncle Harry, then?"

Now Draco felt his face go warm uncontrollably and for no good reason at all. "What? Why-Why would you say that?" he asked. Potter was still pointedly looking away, Draco was very aware of that.

"Anna says it's on a show on TV that Marissa always watches. Anna thinks it's stupid but she watches it anyway because she's a girl. She says there's always two people and one of them looks at the other for a long time and the other doesn't look at the other one, but it's because they both really want to smooch." His eyes suddenly went wide with realization. "Mrs Clark always looks at me for a long time. Do you think that's because she wants to smooch me?"

"Who's Mrs Clark?" Potter asked. The blush wasn't gone.

"She's my math teacher and she's really old and wrinkly and she's always cross because I don't get my homework right and then she looks at me really long. I don't want her to kiss me!" Kevin exclaimed and jumped off his chair to pull Potter by the upper arm in agitation. "Eugh, eugh, eugh!"

"I hardly believe that-" Potter cut in, but Kevin was concerned about too many other things at once to let him finish.

"Do you think Iggy wants to smooch me? She's always looking at me really long, too."

"It's not the same with cats, I think, Kevin," Potter told him.

"Anna says that on the TV show there's looking and then smooching and then there's babies," Kevin babbled on, ignoring his uncle's interjection. "I've looked at Justin for a long time but I don't think I want to smooch him even though he's really a lady and Brad says that he wants to smooch all the ladies because that's what men do. So Justin won't have a baby from me now, or will he?"

"Kevin-," Potter started, just when Dudley re-entered the room. Draco saw Potter's – Harry's – shoulders sag in relief.

"Melinda had to lie down a little," Dudley explained calmly as if to not disturb his resting wife from afar. "She's fine but all the hard work in the kitchen and the rich food has upset her stomach and... yeah. So. There's dessert in the fridge, if we-"

"Actually, Dudley," Potter interjected with haste, "how about we save the dessert for another time? When Melinda is feeling better and all that? I have to get back to work and... yeah." He had got up, pulling his arm out of Kevin's clutches, upon which Kevin went to put his armour back on.

"Oh," Dudley only said and nodded. "Oh, right."

"We, uhm. We could clear the table?" Potter offered, adding, "to, you know, make it easier for you."

"Well. Actually, that'd be..." Dudley stammered wringing his hands, torn between propriety and convenience – and Kevin, who had since left the room and suddenly started howling from the adjacent living room.

"We've got this," Potter assured him and shooed him off towards the source of the agonized noise. Dudley nodded with a grateful smile that turned to a concerned frown as he went to see what the alarmed crying was about.

As soon as he was out of the room and the two of them were alone for the first time, uncle Harry vanished behind the front of Auror Potter. Draco almost admired the changeability.

"'David Munro'." Potter said his taken name with a joyless sneer. "I should have known when Dudley mentioned the name in the invite."

"It's registered," he defended his pseudonym. "Got a paper past and everything. Muggles are kind of big on that." _And on names that are not pompous and awkwardly Latin_, he thought but didn't say.

"How dare you come here?" Potter asked quietly.

When he didn't elaborate further, Draco said carefully, "I was invited."

"I told you to stay away from me. You know, after the last time you made inappropriate advances at me right after assaulting your ex-boyfriend. Instead you take advantage of my cousin to try and-"

"And I heard you," Draco sighed, remembering the last time they had talked and that it had been Potter to say exactly that. "And I tried to do that, to stay away from you, for almost a whole year, you might have noticed. It was shit."

Actually, it was _fine_. His new home was _fine_, and his new neighbours, and his new job in the new city. It was fine not to meet with Pansy and Blaise so often any more because they had made a hobby of nagging and psychoanalysing him. His entire existence was _fine_. Fine, and joyless, and Potterless, and miserable, flecked with yearning that only ever took a definite shape in moments of weakness when he was tipsy or between waking and sleep, always finding himself grasping at the empty air. It was shit.

"You know, I would have gone through with it for- for your sake," he quickly said before Potter could comment, "but then I happened across Dudley at work. He spoke about you, out of the blue. I didn't even know who he is and that you are related then. He said your name and I- just."

He gestured to try and make him understand but lowered his hands again because he knew it simply wouldn't do.

Potter was staring at him with a face carefully void of expression.

"I swear I didn't take advantage of Dudley. Alright? I wanted to- see you I guess, yes, but he invited me to this dinner of his own volition."

After a strange pause in which Potter merely glowered at him, Potter quickly drew his wand from his pocket. Draco backed off reflexively and raised his hands like a Muggle at gunpoint.

"Fuck- Potter, I'm sorry, you hear?" The words galloped out of his mouth in a hurry. Imagines from the last time Potter had stood across from him with a wand in hand came to mind – and this time Snape wouldn't be there to patch him up again. "I'm sorry for this situation and for what I said and the scene I made at the Ministry in front of everybody, alright? I'm sorry about the whole Preston thing, I really just wanted to break up cleanly and didn't _think_- I'm sorry about just about bloody everything I have ever said or done and wished I could take it back because it kills me to remember what a stupid arse I was to you and it's all-"

Potter raised and flicked his wand at the table. The dirty cutlery and crockery rose into the air and found its way to the kitchen sink where they proceeded to clean themselves under the tap with some clattering. The glasses went right behind. The half-empty pots and bowls followed them with another flick, uniting with lids and covers in mid-air and stacking themselves neatly on the rack next to the fridge. Lastly, the tablecloth folded itself while the washed dishes were arranging themselves to dry next to the sink.

"...all wrong. And not... how it's supposed to be," Draco finished lamely as he took his hands down again slowly.

"Stop it," Potter interrupted him forcefully and put the wand back into his pocket. And then he looked up and his gaze fell into his lips again, only to promptly dart away again. "Just stop... talking like that. And stop doing those things. I don't want anything to do with you." He almost whispered the last sentence.

Draco couldn't help it. He murmured back, "Is that why you keep looking at my mouth like you're going to jump my bones any second now?"

Potter went wide-eyed, then glowered, clenched his fists in preparations for an angry retort.

Dudley came back into the room with a cheerful and oblivious "Kevin stepped on a Lego- Oh, the, the table's all clear already! That was really quick!" which immediately made the tension snap like a guitar string and broke their connection.

"I'll have to leave now, Dudley," Potter said briskly, halfway back to uncle-Harry-mode, and fished a bag of Bertie Bott's Beans out of his – obviously magically enlarged – pocket which he put into his surprised cousin's hands. "For Kevin. Give my thanks to Melinda, please? The food was delicious." And he was gone.

Dudley stood there with the little bag of all-flavoured candy in his hands and looked a little lost. Just like Draco felt as he watched Potter flee from him once again.

"I'm sorry, Dudley," Draco felt compelled to say. "Honestly, I-"

The door slammed.

All at once, Draco knew he had this one opportunity. This last one and none more. And it was just walking away from him, probably at a brisk pace.

"I have to. Sorry," he repeated and disapparated.

/

/

His aim was off by merely two metres. He appeared right in front of Potter at the end of the Williams' footpath that lead from the bottom of the doorsteps through the small front yard to the pavement. Because of the distance, Potter didn't walk into him but came to a halt abruptly, an arms length away. He swore and glared.

"This is designated Muggle property. A no-apparation zone. You'll get fined for this." He was shouting through clenched teeth. "Also, get out of my bloody way."

"No," he said calmly but decisively. "I don't want to." _I've had enough of that._

Potter mumbled something under his breath. Draco didn't catch the words but he didn't need to at all. Standing with his back to the Williams' door lamp, Potter was mostly a dark grey outline. A shape with clenched fists and hunched shoulders.

Which suddenly came at him and tackled him out of the way, catching him very much by surprise.

Draco blurted out an inelegant 'hey!' and reflexively grabbed for something to hold on to as he lost balance.

Then, the world turned upside down and very slim in the middle. Next, _he_ turned upside down, making everything seem okay for the quarter of a second while he was being squeezed by a giant hand. Then everything straightened itself out again, unfolding into the an unknown room lying in half-darkness. Finally, he followed, tumbling, right-side-up although several parts of him were still jumbled and in the process of rearranging themselves.

He staggered backwards until his lower back met the edge of something very solid and unyielding. He gave a yelp and held on to it out of reflex.

There was some loud cursing. Then some blinding lights went on to reveal Potter standing there – in what was evidently his own kitchen, judging by the oven and the fridge –, wide-eyed and angrier than Draco had ever seen him. He was pointing his wand at Draco's chest.

"It was an accident. I am sorry." Draco held himself up by the counter. Post-apparition his knees always were a bit wobbly. "For the record, I-"

"Out."

"-didn't meant to intrude-"

"_Out!_" Potter suddenly lowered is wand and shoved it back into his pocket vigorously.

Two steps forward, arms outstretched.

All of a sudden, for the second time in his life, he had Potter's hands around his throat again.

/

/**TBC** _(tomorrow)  
_


	11. Chapter 11

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: Just a little action...  
Goddamn ff net, why don't you allow blank lines? You're making me crazy. Apologies for all the slashes, there was no other way, apparently!

___This story will be uploaded completely by tomorrow evening. I'll post two chapters (one actual chapter and one something that is too short to legitimately be called a chapter, therefore pretentiously titled "epilogue") at the same time. So make sure you read #12, don't just skip to the last/newest addition, because that'd be cheating. A'ight? Cool._

_Thank you for your comments, the-undaunted and Annabel (re:comment: You'll see...!:P Also, I was very flattered by your request!), and thanks to undaunted and Yola Levis for fav'ing!  
_

/

**-/Chapter 11/-**

/

He could see the fright and the surprise in his face. This time, the collar alone wouldn't do. He remembered the lessons in hand-to-hand combat he'd gone through for his Auror license in which they had taught him where the thumbs should go. He felt Malfoy's muscles hard under his palms and the ligaments and cartilage of his larynx under his fingertips.

"Why can't you just get out of my life, why do you keep showing up?" _Why now, why always when I'm weak and maladjusted?_

_Why did the stupid kid's name have to be Justin?_

_Why me? Why you?_

"Potter, please-" Malfoy had brought his hands up reflexively to attempt to pry open ones that were cutting off his air supply, but Harry knew very well how to maintain the pressure.

_Why always bloody you?_

He felt Malfoy's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed laboriously. "I'm sorry," the blond croaked through gritted teeth. He couldn't specify what he was sorry for. Harry didn't particularly care.

_Can't you see that you make me unwell?_

"What the hell do you want from me? Why can't you-"

He felt rather than saw Malfoy shift his weight and his upper body. His hands ceased their prying and reached out towards his face instead. His brain faintly registered that his face and his own throat were exposed.

_If I could strangle you, I would in a heartbeat._

Things happened so fast that he didn't even know exactly what had happened afterwards. His whole body had been busy pushing against and towards Malfoy to hold his grip, busy leaning against Malfoy's rather feeble resistance. But suddenly Malfoy was pulling him by the shoulders, which doubled the momentum and made him move forward. Until they were truly close. Until their breaths met. Then their noses. Then their lips.

The contact was slight and cut short almost before it began. He yelled something inarticulate and pushed blindly into any direction but wasn't successful. Reese, his combat trainer, would've shaken his head with a low chuckle like he always did when he saw one of his students screwing up. He could almost hear him explain how it was that he ended up overbalancing forwards and how the momentum would result in him being pushed against the kitchen counter by his assailant who pressed his hip against him, so forcefully that it was almost painful, and had caught both of his wrists and leaned in yet again-

He jerked his head away and leaned as far back as the counter allowed. _Another blunder, Potter,_ he heard in his head, just as he found that leaning back had put him on weak feet. _You're making room for him. Is this you issuing an invitation?_

"No!" he answered his teacher's voice and tried to make Malfoy back off at the same time. He tried turning his wrists to shake off the grip they were in, in a way that certainly would have amused Reese. The grip just grew stronger, his wrists sore. He bit back a frustrated yell.

With a growled "damn it, Potter" Malfoy let go of his arms and, in the same motion, reached up to get a hold of his head, clamping down over both his ears, to hold him still. To catch him in a vice.

Harry squeezed his lips shut and breathed heavily through his nose as Malfoy's mouth covered his again, properly this time.

His heart felt like a fist that was clenching tightly and snapping open over and over, knocking against his ribcage. Malfoy's grip and the pressure of his body from his chest to his hips down to his thighs were a force that he could only twitch and flail against. Vehement and unyielding as a gale.

With one of his hands, Harry pushed against a shoulder to no avail – the angle was too sharp, Reese would've said, _that way you won't get any motion into it_ – while the other caught a hair tie and tore at it until Malfoy's pigtail broke open. The pain from having his hair pulled made Malfoy gasp and break the kiss, although he didn't let go.

The look in Malfoy's eyes seemed to pierce bone and marrow. Harry's breath hitched – he had never been looked at with such hunger and it scared him. He tried to look away and failed.

Malfoy was panting with his mouth slightly open. His lips were tinged with a hue of red. That close up, there was just nothing else he could look at. Those lips, this strong, relentless, hurtful mouth-

"This look, Potter," Malfoy breathed. He swallowed hard. "This look is the reason why I can't fucking help it."

One of Malfoy's hands buried into his hair. With a swift flick of the wrist of the other hand, glasses were stolen off his nose to remove the obstacle of glass and wire. Harry hardly realized what had happened when his mouth was sealed again, so harshly that it hurt his teeth, as if he wanted to carve himself into him. An arm wrapped itself around him and push-pulled him more tightly towards Malfoy's body, as if it were physically possible to be even closer than they already were without simply melting into one.

His futile resistance waned until he let his heavy arms drop and dangle uselessly at his sides. _Do you give up, Potter?_ Reese asked the way he always used to, just to get confirmation for something he was already sure of anyway.

And maybe to make people admit something to themselves.

Malfoy stopped and pressed their foreheads together when he felt his defence wane. "Please," he said. Harry could feel his warm breath sweep over his mouth which was moist with saliva. "Please, respond. Please."

The clutch on his hair loosened a little. Malfoy touched his hair and his neck with soft but sure fingertips that rose goose-flesh in their wake. He leaned in to gently rub his nose against Harry's and lowered his lips again until their mouths touched once more.

The sensation was like a spark of fire bursting through his nerves. His entire body tingled in response and he couldn't help it.

His eyes fell shut and a small moan that might have been another 'no' escaped through his nose.

Malfoy ran his fingers through his hair. He angled his head a bit further and opened his lips so that his breath caressed him and mingled with his own.

"Please," he repeated in the maddening moment between touches. Harry saw him suck on his own lower lip as if to capture the taste. "Kiss me back, Harry."

A plea. Despite his supremacy, despite the fact that he was in control and they both knew it, a supplication. The tingle rose to a sensation that was almost like pain.

His lips parted, started moving. He would chalk it up to the dizzying intimacy and to the pain and the desperation getting to his head and muddying his already murky thoughts. He would claim that it had been a crazy and confused moment. And it had been. But it had also been clear and so staggeringly simple.

Malfoy moaned in response, and Harry felt his whole body shudder against his own. As if in relief, and excitement.

Once there was a chink in the armour, Malfoy bore down on it without hesitation. The pressure of his lips became fierce and urgent again. His tongue darted forward to invade him.

Harry let it. Sweat prickled out of every pore. Malfoy's tongue was soft and hot, and then hard and teasing as it slid against and circled around his own and swept over his lips. Small, wet sounds clicked loudly in his ears.

_He tastes like sparkling water and spicy gravy._

Every memory of the countless kisses he had shared in his life, memories he had treasured fondly, paled and faded. There had always been something wrong with those kisses, and he hadn't known until now. Now he knew, because of this kiss which got it all right. Every single thing.

One moment Malfoy was all around and inside of him and everything else was small and unimportant.

The next, it was all echoes of touches, pins and needles and thin air that didn't seem to fill his lungs even though he inhaled it greedily.

He almost crumpled to the ground because his knees seemed to have liquefied somewhere along the way. The world was hidden behind a blurry veil and he remembered that his glasses had come off, but he didn't know where they had gone.

In spite of his weak vision, he could see Malfoy in front of him as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Now you know, Potter," he said, out of breath, his voice strangely hoarse.

"Know what?" he asked stupidly and shook his head but his brain refused to rearrange itself like that.

"What I want from you," he answered so quietly that Harry almost didn't catch it over the agitated thumping of his heart in his ears. "Tell-" He inhaled shakily and started over. "Please can you tell me that that's alright?"

Harry felt for his glasses on the counter behind him. He had clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering, and to keep stupid words from spilling out. Stupid, red-hot words that burnt in his mouth. They all began with _I want _and_ Please_.

He cursed when his fingertips nudged the frame and sent the glasses skidding. Some moments passed in which he groped clumsily to catch them properly and then fiddled them back onto his nose.

When he looked up, there was no trace of Malfoy anywhere.

Relief shouldn't feel that way.

He sat down on the floor, leaned his back against the counter and hated himself and his life more desperately than he ever had while his mouth tasted of spices and water and Draco Malfoy.

There were two single blond hairs tangled between his fingers.

/

/

For once, Draco thought he could comprehend why Potter had run away.

He had never wanted anything so much, and the immensity of it scared him. What he had done to get it, it made him afraid of himself. The fact that he would do it again and more without even thinking about it twice was frightening.

More than anything, though, the idea that Potter might yell 'out!' at him once he had the chance made his stomach cramp so violently that he had fled.

He bit the heel of his thumb so that the fresh pain might straighten his thoughts, but it barely did.

He didn't even know exactly where he was. He was walking so quickly, almost ran, into an unspecified direction down the empty street the apparition had taken him. The street lamps were so dim that he could hardly see his feet.

Several minutes later, he had worked up a sweat that invited the chill to seep through his clothes. Shaking, a little from the cold and a lot from the memories, he finally slowed down. He stopped to lean against a wall and simply breathe.

This time the green-meadows-and-a-beach-in-the-summertime- method didn't work. No birds, no waves, just white noise and his own blood thrumming through his head. And pictures of Potter leaning against that kitchen counter with moist lips and hungry eyes that blurred together with what he had actually seen, what had really happened.

_He said 'no'._

For the first time, it had truly filtered down to him.

Draco thought Potter's body might have been saying yes, and maybe his eyes, just for a moment. Just for a moment, that wordless agreement had switched off the doubts and inhibitions, wiped out the memories of Potter fighting him, denying him, despising him. That moment, Potter had wanted him also.

But he had said 'no'.

/

/

Dear

\

Dearest Har

\

Dear Harry

\

Harry

\

Harry Potter

\

Hello Potter

\

Potter,  
Last night was

\

Potter,  
I'm sorry

\

Potter,  
I am sorry. I acted in an improper and reprehensible manner. It was the heat of the moment, I lost control. You looked at me that way and I couldn't

\

Potter,  
I am sorry. I acted in an improper and reprehensible manner. I lost control. It will never happen again unless you want it to

\

Potter,  
I am sorry. Despite what happened

\

Potter,  
I am truly sorry. However, you kissed me back

\

Potter,  
I wish I knew how to not be like that when you're around.

/

/

/

He was at work, sitting on his desk pushing papers. He hadn't turned the page of the case-file in front of him for something like an hour. People were looking at him and whispering to each other.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't ignore the feeling that they could see it. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, but it wouldn't go away. With his back to them, he still knew they were talking. Harry Potter, overpowered. Conquered-

_By another man._

And not just any man.

And he had given in.

_So that's why his wife-_

_And that girlfriend-_

_He always acted kind of-_

_He is not like us._

_Now that explains a lot-_

_Now it all makes sense.  
_

It was six forty. He couldn't remember the last time he had wanted to go home at six forty-five. Even though his home was both achingly empty and also full of reproachful stares. Every reflective surface was full of them.

There was a whoosh of wings. A rather large brown owl had swooped in through the open window to land on his desk and disorganize the case files he was looking at while not really seeing them.

The owl flapped and tucked her beautifully coloured wings, then looked at him with huge round eyes and an air of vigilant boredom.

She suffered through his moment of confusion when he realized that she wasn't carrying a message at all. With an almost disdainful hoot she took flight again – swatting him on the head in the process – and was out of the window and gone. Only the chaos she left behind bore testimony to the fact that she had been there at all. The chaos on Harry's desk as well as the other one.

Almost exactly three minutes later, he left the building. Walking so quickly that some might call it running. His calves hurt when he got home.

He fell asleep on the couch, pulled under by the enormous weight of his head. And his heart.

He dreamt of firm embraces again. The peacefulness remembered from the dream felt so very strange after he woke up. While asleep, things were always so simple and clean, and remembering that frustrated him because he didn't know how to have that while awake. The was just no way in the real world even though it seemed like there should be.

In the real world, he found himself lingering in the supermarket aisle for ten minutes with a packet of gravy powder in his hand. The scent made him want to scream.

He bought it all the same.

/

/**TBC**

_One more chapter and an epilogue to come, tomorrow. Are you still with me? … uhm, hello? *tumbleweed* *crickets*  
_


	12. Chapter 12

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: Another jump in time. The last one.

_So, boys and girls. This is the last time I really get the chance to address you - YOU in particular. Yes, you. Thank you so much. The last two weeks have been ridiculously exciting and happy for me, all your positive feedback - both of the review kind and the wordless kind - and your enthusiasm give me tingly feelings in all the right places. I'm thrilled that I managed to make something you enjoyed. (*proud dog meme* I made dis.)_

_Big thanks again to Nia! You lift me up :D_

_To Annabel: I'd hope that, over the course of all these chapters, it's quite clear why he doesn't just give in. Why don't people in real life "just" give in to their desires? __ Why are we always so unsure about our feelings, and about communicating them to the outside world?_ Why is it so bloody hard to get over oneself and start a relationship? (Hint: The past and the thoughts of others...) Anyway, both your questions (the giving in one, and the owl one) will hopefully be answered thoroughly in this chapter. Thank you for all your reviews!

/

**-/Chapter 12/-**

/

This time, his collar was straight. Not crooked in the slightest, and without effort. It pleased him. The day promised to be generally disagreeable, so it was nice that at the very least the inconsequential things were in his favour.

One last glance at the watch – seven minutes early. One last glance in the mirror – his hair required pins and a spell to hold it in place now and his ponytail was all the way down his neck. Except for the tired eyes, he cut quite a figure.

_Close enough._

He tossed some floo powder into the fire and stepped into the Ministry atrium. The buzz and bustle was as confused and overwhelming as it had been the last time. He tried to focus on his own and other people's feet, so as to not step onto the latter. Feet were much easier to handle than faces.

He met with Skinner at the fountain. A few brief words, two signatures and a handshake later, the attorney was already on his merry way again and lost in the crowd. Ironically, Draco had rejected his offer to accompany him and handle the often rather unobliging Ministry staff for him so he could gain access to the archives personally and oversee the procedure himself. "Are you sure?" he had asked him, twice. Both times he had answered 'yes', even though he wasn't sure at all if he really thought about it.

Now that he couldn't spot the guy any more between the scurrying witches and wizards, he really wanted him by his side. _For to hide behind him in case I run into-_

He clutched the case file to his chest and made his way to the entrance counter.

The next two hours felt like war. Long periods of mind-numbing, tense-shouldered waiting, peppered with short bursts of aggression.

Ministry staff was really bafflingly unobliging, even more so than he had expected. Nobody seemed to be in charge, nobody wanted the hassle, the paperwork, the responsibility. Mostly, nobody was prepared to respect his insistence on witnessing Terry Boot's stored memory being expertly destroyed. Even though he absolutely had the right to demand this, since he was depicted in this record. Skinner had assured him that the law and all leading cases were firmly on his side.

"Look, I merely came here to see to it that my private data is removed," he told the grandmotherly Auror in whose hands - and office - he had eventually ended up in. "The case has been closed for a long time, the recording is useless as a means of evidence, therefore I see no reason for the Ministry to be so-"

"I said it before and I'll say it again, Mr Malfoy, the problem does not lie with the destruction of the evidence per se – Merlin knows our property rooms are brimful and could do with some thinning out – but your physical access to those rooms would have to be authorised by several people, and we would have to get an exception permit for your magical signature-"

"So inform those people, and get me the permit." _Merlin, grant me patience. Right bloody now._

"-which might take some time. Hours." She weaved her fingers together on the desk. "Maybe even all day. People are busy, Mr Malfoy. And you can't hurry magic, either."

He bit back the several dozens of snide remarks that were on the tip of his tongue and ignored the softly patronizing smile. _Beaches and meadows, beaches and meadows._ "I understand that my request is contingent upon some effort. However-"

"An effort we could easily spare ourselves. All you would have to do is to trust one of the staff to go down into the archives, aim their wand at a vial and say a word." She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, looking at him mildly. "Surely you don't believe people here to be entirely incompetent."

"Incompetence has nothing to do with it, Auror Pascoe. As I am sure you are aware," he said simply and offered nothing more. She knew his last name, she wouldn't need any further explanation. It was almost funny that, under the circumstances, they were still trying to appease him with words. As if he had any reason to back down. As if they had ever given him any reason to do them a favour.

Auror Pascoe seemed to understand that, too. She sighed quietly. "I did mean it when I said that it might take several hours to get the permission and to fix the archives' protective spells."

His plane ticket said tomorrow evening, sixteen past seven. Plenty of time.

"It will take longer the longer we sit here, I presume," he said with a shrug.

His opposite sighed and smiled and nodded, then got up. He decided to take this as a victory and made to follow her out of her office.

"Oh, and about the interrogation log whose deletion you also filed for," she said just as he stood next to her on his way out the door, taller by several inches but still feeling oddly towered over.

"I don't hope there is any problem with wiping it," he ventured. _Please don't tell me that the record on which I can be heard describing myself as a 'bloody poofter' cannot be destroyed for some reason._ He prepared to become angry in spite of Clara Pascoe's infinitely soothing demeanour. _I have the right-_

"That log doesn't seem to exist."

All the well-prepared sentences evaporated.

Auror Pascoe apologised and explained that there were glitches in the spells, caused by heavy magical interference of the building itself. She asked him if the request had been complied with to his satisfaction under these circumstances.

For a split second he suspected that it might all be a lie. A plot against him.

Then he remembered Potter's bloodshot eyes and it was simply more logical to assume that he hadn't activated those spells. Maybe he and his equally sleepy colleagues had forgotten. Perhaps he had stunned them all with his words. Perhaps it had been on purpose. Either way, he would never know.

He nodded a curt 'yes' and Clara smiled gratefully as if to say 'See, we can be friends'.

He waited in front of the Headquarters offices. Someone brought him coffee and a bag of poppy seed bagels, and eventually even a book because he declined the newspaper. It was a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein – the original version with the moving photos. He flipped it open and went through the motions of reading while people walked past him in both directions, only taking note of him because his crossed legs forced them to take an additional step as they traversed the corridor.

He kept his ears open for a familiar voice but didn't hear it in the five hours he sat there and endured the last time he ever planned to be treated like this by the English Ministry of Magic. And the last time he ever planned on waiting to hear that voice.

/

/

Ruth Magellan didn't create the impression of being capable of performing the simple spell Auror Pascoe had mentioned half a day ago. She had a strange, waddling gait and a face that seemed frozen in a simper, with fearsomely large front teeth in the upper jaw. The walk down to the archives whose protections had admitted him with a prickle had her panting. Everything about her screamed Hufflepuff.

Except for the personality, maybe. In stark, grating contrast to her appearance, the personality was Slytherin. The unpleasant side.

Draco could almost picture them arriving at the shelf and Miss Magellan refusing to perform the spell. Just out of spite. Because she had drawn the short straw and had been sentenced to being of service to the guy who had dared to come to the Ministry, wave a few pieces of paper around and force the elders onto their knobbly knees.

In the evening. After hours. The scandal. The _audacity_.

He fought against the urge to ask 'Are we there yet' and just shuffled after her in his own slightly stiff gait - his back and backside had gone from 'uncomfortable' to 'unbearable' three hours ago - past rows and rows of shelves sitting there in the half-light of a room whose measurements possibly defied all the laws of architecture.

Each shelf sported a bright orange plate with a number on it. The numbers weren't consecutive. Some weren't even numbers but symbols, or names. Draco wondered faintly if Magellan knew where they were going, seeing that there wasn't much of a system behind this at all.

Between the rows A38 and *Jennifer1987 they finally turned off and walked down the shelf. The box they were searching for wasn't far down, stacked on top of three others at shoulder height.

His unwilling companion studied a clipboard dangling from the side of the shelf, mumbled something to herself and signed with a ballpoint quill from her robe pocket.

The vial she then took from the box wasn't much of a vial at all, but more of a small, stoppered test tube in which a small amount of greyish-white fog was swirling lazily. She pulled the stopper, unceremoniously poured the fog right onto the floor where it formed a small gaseous puddle, and finally aimed her wand at it. The incantation was short and the visible effect thoroughly unimpressive. The fog just thinned and vanished.

Under that circumstance it was strangely impossible to feel relieved. He thought he would, but he didn't.

"Happy now?" Magellan asked him with an annoyed look. He didn't deign a response.

While she was busy putting the now empty test tube back into the box, putting the lid back on top of it and shoving it back into its place, he sneaked a peek at the clipboard. It appeared to be an index of contents, and a table of users signing in and out for taking evidence out of the box.

The list only contained one name, over and over again.

It filled all the blanks from the top of the column almost all the way to the bottom where only a handful of lines were left empty. The dates went far back and there were big gaps between some of them. The most recent ones noted were from last week's Tuesday, from the day before yesterday, and from today.

"Now," Ruth grunted as she had finished and wiped her hands on her robes. "Since the customer is satisfied, we can go-Oh, what are _you_ doing here, esteemed colleague?"

Draco didn't dare to turn around.

"I- uh, just wanted to check why my copy had gone flying off all of a sudden." He sounded ever so slightly out of breath.

Several of Draco's internal organs seemed to have spontaneously switched places and started fighting each other.

"Yes, that's what would naturally happen. Our dearest client here demanded a full-on dissipation on short notice."

"Well." Pause. "It worked."

"Of course it worked." Ruth tsked. "Spells don't get much easier than that. Even Carey or Isabelle could've managed – but noo, they are _working_ at this time of day, they don't have tiiime for that. No, let's get someone to do it during her free time. And let's make her drag the applicant down to the archives, too, because security is overrated anyway and we have all these spells just for fun!"

Something about her tone wrenched a remark from him, even though he didn't think he was bodily capable of talking. "Since I seem to be a colossal security risk to your precious archives, how about I just leave?"

"Again?" Potter asked. He said it with a calm and steady voice and Draco tried very hard to imagine that there wasn't anything hidden in the word. He turned and looked up to meet his eyes, but his courage left him before he had even reached his chin.

"Look, Mr Potter, since you're already here and you seem to have things to talk about, why don't you accompany Mr Malfoy back to the desk? He will find his wand there waiting."

"Ruth, I didn't-" Potter stuttered. Draco felt his mouth go dry instantly.

"You're on flexible working hours, Potter, not me. Give my regards to Bert, tell him I'll be taking the back door out." With some more mumbling, she shuffled off at a pace.

Draco reckoned that declining Skinner's offer had been the most foolish thing he had ever done. Well, second most foolish.

Moments passed. Ruth was quickly out of sight and they were alone in this huge room that was now too huge for comfort and too small at the same time.

"You're leaving, I heard." He didn't mean the archives, obviously.

Even though he said it quietly it still made Draco flinch like an idiot.

"Yes," he nodded and cleared his throat. "Yes, I am."

Since he didn't say anything back, he felt compelled to elaborate, to fill the silence of the huge, tiny room with something. Even if it was flimsy and unimportant. He cleared his throat again.

"There seems to be a clause in the wizarding law from 1392. Its fourth paragraph signed all my father's possessions over to me two weeks ago because his prison term has exceeded a certain odd number of days and he has ceased to exist, legally speaking. So I just found out that my family, apart from being in unsurprisingly great debt, possesses a yacht that sunk in 1971 and is still rotting somewhere in the waters before Salerno, as well as a completely useless plot of land in California which a great-great-great-grand-uncle purchased for a ridiculous sum of money during the gold rush, also, a collection of more than fifteen thousand crown corks currently stored in a separate Gringotts vault, and a villa somewhere near Bordeaux. Probably smaller than the Manor, and possibly in a state of disuse, but it's officially mine now. And I figured..." He shrugged and took a deep breath. "I think it's time to try something new. Somewhere- somewhere else."

The words dissipated even more quickly than Terry Boot's memory, as if the room itself was sucking them up. But at the same time, Draco imagined them hanging between them, an obstacle and a bridge between their bodies all at once.

"That's good," Potter said after a moment. Draco immediately wished he had said anything else, anything at all.

The rule about silences getting awkward after four seconds was off by roughly three and a half seconds, Draco found out just that moment.

"You viewed that memory... quite often." He gestured vaguely towards the clipboard.

Potter admitted to it hesitantly. "I - did."

Somewhere a door fell shut with a bang that echoed through the cavernous archives. They both looked up and around as if they could see what had caused the sound and their eyes met for a second.

"It helps me think," Potter explained. He seemed to be counting the boxes on the shelf now. "The noise from the... from your party. It helps me focus at work. Helped."

"Ah," Draco nodded. He wasn't sure if he should apologise for taking it away from him, so he didn't. Neither was he sure if apologising – again – for the content of that particular memory that he had witnessed vanish moments ago would make any difference. He didn't suspect it would. So he kept his mouth shut.

"I should see you back to the door." He started on his way in the direction where Draco and Ruth had come from.

Aware of how depressingly symbolic it was for him to be walking after Potter through an empty room, looking at his back, unable to catch up with or overtake him because he was the one leading the way, Draco followed him. Potter's shoulders were so tense and hunched again that Draco couldn't bear watching him, though, so he looked at the shelves they trudged past.

"You sent that owl," Potter suddenly said, turning his head ever so slightly. "The next day," he added under his breath but Draco heard.

"That damn bird," he bit out without real fire. He had sent the owl off half a dozen times, only to catch her again with a spell and tear the letter off her leg. Lather, rinse, repeat. After the second time, Garuda had caught on to it and started dodging his spells wildly, so he had to fly after her with his broom to capture her again. No wonder she ended up completely fed up and went to find the six-time addressee despite not actually bearing a message for him. Just for the hell of it. Stubborn thing.

"I apologise if she bothered you." The stiltedness made him feel safe.

"She- surprised me. That is all."

A short silence.

"It's actually a good thing she didn't bring a message." It sounded like he was talking to himself and had forgotten that Draco was behind him.

Draco frowned. First at the shelves – they were walking past A-39B and 3107 right now -, then at the back of Potter's head. Finally, a terse "why?" managed to slip out. _Didn't want to hear all the things I didn't know how to say to you?_

"I was still at work."

That made even less sense to him. "So?" It came out sharper than he had intended.

Potter hesitated. "Well." Draco heard him swallow. "Personal letters are recorded."

It took a second to get down to what he was actually trying to say. Potter chose exactly that second to spell it out for him. "I wouldn't want to- to be taken for-. I wouldn't want to be implicated."

It sounded like 'I wouldn't want to be tainted by you'. And it hurt viciously.

"So you're _that_ scared of what other people think-" he started to lash out but Potter interrupted him. He stopped in his tracks and turned around suddenly with narrowed eyes and an angry hiss in his voice.

"That memory you just deleted – _no one_ except me ever saw it to the end. No one ever heard you say my name. No one." His words were heavy and like punches to the stomach. "The voices you heard through the open door that night in the interrogation room? That was a spell I put there because there _should_'ve been someone in that room. I wanted to make it seem like I was going by the rulebook. That- confession – no one else was there to hear it. I never cast the recording spell, either, so there is no log."

He paused and watched his words sink in.

And sink in they did, slowly, reluctantly.

_They don't know._

_All this time._

_No one knows._

"If it really didn't matter what other people think, you wouldn't feel relieved right now," Potter said and turned away as if to give him some privacy to deal with his denial by himself.

Draco leaned a shoulder against a near shelf and breathed. In and out. In and out. All those looks. _Maybe they were only in my head._

_Maybe it was only because of my crooked collar._

He resisted the slight urge to throw his head back and cackle like a lunatic. Instead, he sighed. Ironic. They didn't hate him, avoid and slight him because they knew he was queer. Or because they knew he was queer for their bloody national treasure. However, there were still those issues of him looking like his father, and being a Death Eater, and being a Malfoy, and being one who had fallen from grace. _I might as well start wearing high heels and tight leather pants tomorrow. They're going to look at me like that one way or another in the end._

And still, there was relief, unmistakably. Tarnished and sour, but he accepted it – gratefully – nonetheless.

He looked up to see Potter clenching and unclenching his fists by his sides, as if ready to explode. And sure enough, without even another word from him or much more than a glance in his direction, words burst out of him. Draco could almost hear the years over which they had been accrued, slowly, hidden from sight.

"Me, scared of other people- am I? Am I really? They called me mad, a liar, a fraud when I was barely a teenager, they called me a failure, unsupportive, even abusive just some years ago – is it cowardice when I try to avoid a repeat performance of that? Knowing full well that it would be way, way worse? I'd say anyone who'd willingly go through that again is completely fucked in the head. Don't you think?"

Draco didn't dare to answer. His voice had risen. The storm was breaking and he knew he couldn't interrupt it.

"All those big words, Malfoy," Potter now almost spat at him, and then sing-songed with a mock voice "_for the record, let the world know, hear ye, hear ye, I'm bent as a nine knut piece_ – and you're no different, you really aren't. You aren't that immune and mighty even if you want to believe that. You don't want them talking about you, not like that, not that you have the slightest goddamn idea about how it would be for me. You say you don't care what they say, but it's a bloody lie and you know it. You're no Luna Lovegood. So you don't have the goddamn right to call me anything. Or to even fucking think ill of me for not- not just- I can't just-"

Potter pulled his hair with a frustrated groan. There was what others wanted of him and what he desperately wanted himself to want. But there were always those other thoughts as well, and they didn't go away.

To stop his agitated flailing – and also just to touch him – Draco caught his elbow and made him look him in the eye. "Was it your 'no', or was it theirs? Tell me," he insisted, passing over everything Potter had just rambled about and getting to the real point instead. It seemed to him that this was the most important question he had ever asked. His insides were squirming in unrest.

Potter glared at him and pulled his elbow out of his grip forcefully. "Don't you get it, Malfoy!? I am _one _of_ 'them'_!"

His voice carried far and wide through the archives until it trickled off, restoring the booming silence that was only broken by Potter's agitated breathing.

"I am _not_ like you."

They looked at each other, then quickly away, and they both knew it was a lie. It had been last time he said it, and it was this time. Potter took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes so harshly that Draco feared for his eyesight.

Such a tragic and sad thing to find out – that Harry Potter was, in fact, exactly like him in this way. That he wasn't stronger, like Draco had always assumed. The two of them, each in their own manner, had to yield to the thoughts of others. They always had and they would just keep on yielding. Every single day. And there was no way to stop it without having their lives come entirely undone. Again.

He was one of _them_. He would not and could not stop being one of _them_, any more than he could peel himself out of his skin.

Draco knew then that there was nothing more that he could do. It made him want to sit down, close his eyes. Think of beaches and meadows and imagine stuffing the feeling that filled him – heavy as lead and dark grey like wet dust – into bottles, sealing them up and throwing them into the sea or burying them deep in the earth between the trees.

"That evening-," he started instead since he couldn't sit down and he figured that if he just talked, he might be able to breathe normally again sometime. "I wished I could honestly say I'm sorry for what I did and what happened, because I know I should be. But I'm really not. I just keep thinking about that kiss and it might be the single most arousing thing I ever felt and then I'm only sorry for what I didn't do and what didn't happen."

"Shut up," Potter said. It sounded almost like a sob.

"Some things are much, much easier than you make them up to be, Potter." He shrugged, which was surprisingly exhausting. "I just want to kiss you. And for you to kiss me back. And, perhaps, the naughty stuff," he amended with an also exhausting half-smile, silently conceding that, actually, those bits were not all that easy but required some skill and pliability. "I want you to feel good and I want to feel good with you." He looked up into Harry Potter's stricken face. "What do _you_ want? If the world was as empty as this room, what would _you_... _really_ want?"

After several moments of silently opening and closing his mouth, Potter swallowed hard and only said "I can't."

Draco bit his tongue and nodded.

Somewhere to his right, a door opened with a mighty creak and yelp. Lights flared up to show the intruder the way. Steps echoed through the archives, they became louder first but then grew fainter as someone apparently walked down an aisle. Eventually, it stopped. A silent listener. Their presence was like the buzz of angry bees.

In wordless agreement, they resumed their way back to the main entrance where Bert was holding his wand hostage. There was nothing left to say.

He dipped his hand into the box that was enchanted to pick up his magical signature and freed his wand from the spells binding it. Bert also handed over his coat, his wallet and the mobile phone he had made a habit of carrying. He didn't dare switching it back on, it had been fairly expensive and he didn't want to ruin it.

"Please let Auror Pascoe know that I'm, well, content with the cooperation," he remarked as he shrugged into his coat. _Even if it took the better half of a day_, he thought with a glance at the fob watch he just reattached.

Potter didn't even react. It was all the same to Draco. He had thought that Potter would have left by now, but he stood by as Draco rearranged his clothing and his possessions.

"So," he finally said, trying to readjust his collar, but it refused to be as straight as it had been in the morning, and wasn't that also just symbolic? "It seems that... it is done." He briefly considered offering a handshake while his desires considered offering a long, deep goodbye kiss that really didn't mean goodbye at all. He put a hand in his pocket and pinched himself through the fabric instead.

And then he started to walk. Down the corridor, through the stairway door, up the stairs with heavy legs, back into the Atrium, through the bustle of all those people who only looked at him disdainfully because of envy, or because he was in their way exactly like they were in his, or because of his collar.

He went home, made some last calls – his phone's menus were now in Hebrew and he couldn't switch it back – packed the last of his bags, downed two potions and slept fourteen dreamless hours in his stripped flat.

He looked out of the window through the entire flight even though there was nothing to see but clouds and dark lands below.

/

/**TBC** _(take heart, it's almost over. Onwards to the epilogue, chapter 13.)_


	13. Chapter 13

Title: Thoughts of others

Author: Aristide Cauquemaire

Pairing: HP/DM

Rating: M for grown-up language and a teensy bit of violence

Warning: Called epilogue because it doesn't even have 700 words and therefore doesn't deserve to be called "chapter". Also, because this is the end of the journey.

_Have you read chapter 12? I posted it today as well._

/

/

**-/Chapter 13 - Epilogue/-**

/

Dear Draco,

\

Dear

\

Draco,

\

Malfoy,  
I am sorry. I was

\

Malfoy,  
I was stupid. I am sor

\

Malfoy,  
I am stupid. I should have

\

Malfoy,  
This is not an apology. There is nothing I need to apol

\

Malfoy,  
I am angry.

\

Malfoy,  
I'm not good with words. So why the hell am I writing this fucking letter

\

Malfoy,  
If things weren't difficult and I weren't a mess – if I asked, would you let me

Harry Potter was not normally one to throw hexes at animals. Especially not at young owls in training whose intentions were pure and good. But seeing that letter – it wasn't really a letter, it wasn't even a note, it was an assembly of almost meaningless, crabbed words on paper that wasn't meant for anyone's eyes – that "letter" fly away into a rainy London morning made him curse the overzealous little fucker like he never had before. But it was young and fast and agile, and finally it was gone and beyond his reach.

He kicked at things until it felt like he had broken or at least badly bruised his toe and threw the glass carafe of his coffee machine across the kitchen which he regretted instantly. The carafe had been half full.

The rage subsided and cold dread set in.

He spent the day trying to tell himself that the young barn owl was such a scrawny little thing and that she might as well have lost the slip of paper in the weather – the weather reports informed him that there were strong winds and rain all across Britain, and the English Channel, and France. And anyhow, maybe the stupid animal hadn't even made it across the water at all. It was a long way to Bordeaux. Inexperienced birds had been known to just die from exhaustion halfway.

Days went by. Eventually the morning of the owl incident was a whole week ago. The kitchen stopped smelling of old coffee. Harry stopped losing sleep over the inadvertently sent message, although it wasn't clear if that was because the worry lost his edge, or because he was simply bodily tired.

Another week later he came home from a three-day mission. His head was so comfortably numb and empty that he didn't even notice the animal sitting perched on the back rest of his kitchen chair at first. Plus, it was sooty all over from obviously having entered the house via the chimney, and its white and creamy feathers were grey and black.

The obscure silhouette screeched at him as he passed it by which almost have him a heart attack.

The sight of the little message, rolled up and tied tidily to her leg, finished him. He reached out to steady himself on the wall.

Then he went and all but ripped the note off of her – she nipped at his fingers for that, indignant about his roughness – and unrolled it. It was dirty and smeared and soaked on the edges.

His heart skipped two beats when he read it.

_Malfoy,  
If things weren't difficult and I weren't a mess – if I asked, would you let me_

It was his own letter.

"You only brought it back," he whispered at the owl and choked on his words.

And then choked again when he spotted an addition to what he had written.

In very neat, small script, Draco Malfoy had written a response right at the bottom of the tattered slip, as if to leave room for all the words he hadn't managed to get onto the paper when his overeager trainee had abducted it.

Harry breathed, and smiled despite himself, and read it again.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

_In a heartbeat, Potter._

/

/

/**FIN**

_(Thank you all so much.)_


End file.
